Wednesday of 22nd Week in Ordinary Time
THE GOOD NEWS OF THE KINGDOM
We are God’s community, and therefore all division among us is a shame. It shows that we have not yet grown up in the Spirit as “spiritual” people. If we could only grow up!
Jesus has preached his message of hope in the lake town of Capernaum and confirmed it by liberating the poor and the sick from the powers of evil. He has to bring the same good news to other places. The gospel of hope in a new world is destined for all. With the people healed by Jesus, let us in this Eucharist thank the Lord for his good news.
First Reading: 1 Corinthians 3:1-15
But for right now, friends, I’m completely frustrated by your unspiritual dealings with each other and with God. You’re acting like infants in relation to Christ, capable of nothing much more than nursing at the breast. Well, then, I’ll nurse you since you don’t seem capable of anything more. As long as you grab for what makes you feel good or makes you look important, are you really much different than a babe at the breast, content only when everything’s going your way? When one of you says, “I’m on Paul’s side,” and another says, “I’m for Apollos,” aren’t you being totally infantile?
Who do you think Paul is, anyway? Or Apollos, for that matter? Servants, both of us—servants who waited on you as you gradually learned to entrust your lives to our mutual Master. We each carried out our servant assignment. I planted the seed, Apollos watered the plants, but God made you grow. It’s not the one who plants or the one who waters who is at the center of this process but God, who makes things grow. Planting and watering are menial servant jobs at minimum wages. What makes them worth doing is the God we are serving. You happen to be God’s field in which we are working.
Or, to put it another way, you are God’s house. Using the gift God gave me as a good architect, I designed blueprints; Apollos is putting up the walls. Let each carpenter who comes on the job take care to build on the foundation! Remember, there is only one foundation, the one already laid: Jesus Christ. Take particular care in picking out your building materials. Eventually there is going to be an inspection. If you use cheap or inferior materials, you’ll be found out. The inspection will be thorough and rigorous. You won’t get by with a thing. If your work passes inspection, fine; if it doesn’t, your part of the building will be torn out and started over. But you won’t be torn out; you’ll survive—but just barely.
Gospel: Luke 4:38-44
He left the meeting place and went to Simon’s house. Simon’s mother-in-law was running a high fever and they asked him to do something for her. He stood over her, told the fever to leave—and it left. Before they knew it, she was up getting dinner for them.
When the sun went down, everyone who had anyone sick with some ailment or other brought them to him. One by one he placed his hands on them and healed them. Demons left in droves, screaming, “Son of God! You’re the Son of God!” But he shut them up, refusing to let them speak because they knew too much, knew him to be the Messiah.
He left the next day for open country. But the crowds went looking and, when they found him, clung to him so he couldn’t go on. He told them, “Don’t you realize that there are yet other villages where I have to tell the Message of God’s kingdom, that this is the work God sent me to do?” Meanwhile he continued preaching in the meeting places of Galilee.
Prayer
Lord our God,
we thank you today for Jesus, your Son.
He came to heal our wounds
and to set us going on the way
to you and to one another.
Help us in our fumbling, stumbling attempts
to continue looking for him
and to make his gospel of hope and love
come true among us as the good news
that your Son is alive among us
and that he is our Lord for ever. Amen.
Reflection:
31 August 2022
Luke 4: 38-44
A Church on the move
We continue to read from the account of Evangelist Luke about Jesus spending a Sabbath day in Capernaum. After driving out an ugly demon from a person in the Synagogue and refusing even to have any dialogue with the evil powers, Jesus moves to the house of Peter.
Fr. Armellini would explain this act of Jesus moving from the synagogue to the House of Peter as a symbolic gesture. For the community of Luke, the House of Peter is a symbol of the house of the disciples of Jesus – i.e., the Church. Jesus walks in and first heals the woman– Peter’s mother-in-law – suffering from a fever. The woman represents the Chruch. The Church has its own fevers and illnesses that paralyses it from getting up and being at the service of others. Anything that makes us lazy or prevents us from being at the service of others is a fever that forces us on the bed. Being in the Church, if we refuse to be at the service of others, it is an indication that we are sick and we need an urgent healing!
For the Church to move on with its mission of healing the wounds of the world, she needs to be healed of her own fevers in the first place. Therefore, when Jesus walks in to the house of Peter, his first action would be to bring healing to the fevers of those within the household. Once healed of her fever, the woman gets up immediately and moves on with her mission of serving them.
All the people who were sick, with various illnesses were brought to the house of Peter, seeking a healing touch of the Lord. It is also a symbol of the sick world that stands before the Church, in need of the healing touch. The Church shares the mission of Christ to bring healing to the world. “He laid his hands on each of them and cured them,” says the Gospel. Nobody is excluded from the mercy and grace of Christ. And this our mission too.
Demons, as they did in the synagogue earlier, continue their trade here too – shouting “You are the Son of God.” But Jesus wouldn’t fall into their trap of soliciting any public applause or adulations. Once the mission is completed, he does not stay there any longer. Despite the plea of the people, Jesus moves on to other places. Here is a lesson to learn for the Missionary Church. Our mission is to be on the move in service of God’s people and not to be stationed in the comforts of places where we are appreciated and accepted.