The Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time, February 7, 2021

Mark 1:29–39

On leaving the synagogue Jesus entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John. Simon’s mother-in-law lay sick with a fever. They immediately told him about her. He approached, grasped her hand, and helped her up. Then the fever left her and she waited on them. When it was evening, after sunset, they brought to him all who were ill or possessed by demons. The whole town was gathered at the door. He cured many who were sick with various diseases, and he drove out many demons, not permitting them to speak because they knew him. Rising very early before dawn, he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed. Simon and those who were with him pursued him and on finding him said, “Everyone is looking for you.” He told them, “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come.” So he went into their synagogues, preaching and driving out demons throughout the whole of Galilee.

Both St. Mark and St. Luke relate that the Lord healed St. Peter’s mother-in-law upon entering Peter’s house.  She lay “sick with fever”, probably in a back room of the house.  We can see this because the unmarried women of the family stayed in the back of their dwellings in order to afford the, privacy.  We can  also see this because according to Mark, Peter and his brother Andrew told Jesus about her immediately after he entered the house.  To this point in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus has not cured anyone from a disease, although he has just driven a demon out of a man.  Therefore, they may not have told the Lord about her with an eye to his curing her.  They simply may have been explaining the groans she uttered in her suffering.  They do not seem to have asked him to do anything for her.  Luke, on the other hand, tells us that “they besought him for her” (Luke 4, 38).

“He approached, grasped her hand, and helped her up.”  Only Mark tells us that Jesus “grasped her hand and helped her up”.  Luke says only that she “rose immediately” (Luke 4, 39).  She was an older woman, though probably not elderly.  She was certainly widowed, as she was living in the house of her son-in-law, which also tells us that she had no sons of her own and allows for the possibility that Peter’s wife may have been her only child.  Peter’s father was also dead by then, for the unmarried Andrew was living with him.  Neither Mark nor Luke says anything more specific about her disease than that “she was ill with a high fever” (Luke 4, 38).  Any number of infections could have caused her fever, and in the days before antibiotics, any of these infections could well have been fatal.  Peter and Andrew led Jesus to her in the back.  Her condition would have rendered her pitiable to look at.  But the Lord not only looked upon her, but he put out his hand, rough, calloused, and strong from years in the carpentry shop, and took her smaller, frail hand.  With his strong, masterful grip, he helped her up.  “Then the fever left her”.  The way Luke tells the story, the Lord seems to heal her while she is still lying down, and she gets up afterwards.  Mark indicates that she was healed as the Lord grasped her hand, or while he was helping her up, or as she was standing.  At any rate, she is healed while he has her hand in his.

“And she waited on them.”  No one spoke.  The woman went outside to help with the meal.  It was as though she intuited that the visitor had healed her to serve him.  Mark makes it a point that the woman did not need to convalesce after her nearly fatal illness.  She got up at once, and not to move herself to a more comfortable position, but to go to work.  And although she needed the help of the Lord to rise from where she had lain, she did not need it to make her way to where the dinner was being prepared.  The Apostles, stunned, let her pass.

The neighbors would have noticed her when she came outside, and by the end of dinner everyone in the town knew about the exorcism and the cure of the fever.  A new kind of fever came over the people of the place, and they   “brought to him all who were ill or possessed by demons.”  The whole town seemed to camp itself outside the house, and the Lord, like a good servant, attended to each man, woman, and child brought before him.  And then, by morning, they were all looking for him again, to hear him speak more.  When told the news, the Lord answered, “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come.”  He could have waited for the people of those villages to come to him, but he had come to serve, and so he goes out to them.

The Lord shows us how to serve those to whom we are sent, and Peter’s mother-in-law shows us how to serve him.