Saturday in the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time, February 13, 2021

Genesis 3:9-24

The LORD God called to Adam and asked him, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden; but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid myself.” Then he asked, “Who told you that you were naked? You have eaten, then, from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!” The man replied, “The woman whom you put here with meB she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.” The LORD God then asked the woman, “Why did you do such a thing?” The woman answered, “The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it.” Then the LORD God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, you shall be banned from all the animals and from all the wild creatures; On your belly shall you crawl, and dirt shall you eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.” To the woman he said: “I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall be your master.” To the man he said: “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat, “Cursed be the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, as you eat of the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat, Until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; For you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return.” The man called his wife Eve, because she became the mother of all the living. PFor the man and his wife the LORD God made leather garments, with which he clothed them. Then the LORD God said: “See! The man has become like one of us, knowing what is good and what is evil! Therefore, he must not be allowed to put out his hand to take fruit from the tree of life also, and thus eat of it and live forever.” The LORD God therefore banished him from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he had been taken. When he expelled the man, he settled him east of the garden of Eden; and he stationed the cherubim and the fiery revolving sword, to guard the way to the tree of life.

The word “paradise” only occurs in the Scriptures a handful of times.  It is a Persian word meaning “a pleasure park”, “an orchard”, or an “enclosed garden”.  The meaning implies a place deliberately planted and arranged for human benefit.  The word is found in the opening chapters of Genesis, in the Gospel of St. Luke, and in Revelation.  In Revelation 2, 7, the Lord says in his letter to the church at Ephesus, dictated to St. John: “To him who overcomes I will give to eat of the tree of life which is in the paradise of my God.”  Thus, the loss of paradise, described in the First Reading for today’s Mass, has been repaired, and the one who believes in Christ and overcomes temptation and persecution will enter it.  The Lord himself will “give to eat of the tree of life”, and so he shall live forever.

In Luke 23, 43, the Lord tells the Good Thief, whose name has come down to us as “Dismas”: “Amen I say to you: This day you shall be with me in paradise.”  The Good Thief, hanging on a cross beside Jesus, several feet off, confesses his faith in him and asks Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom.  Jesus’s answer makes clear that his kingdom is paradise: “This day you will be with me in paradise.”

The use here and in Revelation of “paradise” ought to make us wonder.  The word is not used at all in the prophets or the psalms, and only comes up again in two places in the New Testament, as though it only brought up bitter memories of what was lost long ago.  But why does the Lord Jesus use this word — which he is not recorded as using during his preaching — at the end of his life?  Surely, he could have simply said to the Good Thief, “This day you will be with me in heaven”, or “in my kingdom”, or “in the kingdom of heaven”, terms he had actually used during his preaching.  The Lord purposely uses “paradise” for two reasons.  First, he promises refreshing sweetness to a man who is himself parched with thirst and gasping for breath, a man who like the Lord has eaten or drunk nothing since, perhaps, the evening before, nor has he slept, in all likelihood.  The Lord promises him the cool breezes of the Garden, peaceful rest, and his wonderful fellowship there, after this nightmare of scorching heat and the mockery and blows of the soldiers and the crowd amidst his agony.

Second, the Lord is teaching that all things will now be restored through his Death.  The Good Thief signifies us, condemned to die because of our sins and utterly unable to help ourselves.  Seeing our Lord, we cry to him for mercy, admitting our guilt and his perfect innocence.  The Lord, moved by his compassion for our fallen condition and our repentance of heart, brings us back to the place meant for us in the beginning.  We are as naked as the Good Thief, and as guilty, and as contrite.  This stands in contrast to Adam, who though naked and guilty, did not ask for mercy but set the blame on his wife.  For the Saints after their deaths on earth, paradise is no longer guarded by the fierce cherubim with his fiery sword, but is opened up wide by the One holding his Cross.

Friday in the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time, February 12, 2021

Mark 7:31-37

Jesus left the district of Tyre and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, into the district of the Decapolis. And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him off by himself away from the crowd. He put his finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue; then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him, “Ephphatha!” (that is, “Be opened!”) And immediately the man’s ears were opened, his speech impediment was removed, and he spoke plainly. He ordered them not to tell anyone. But the more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it. They were exceedingly astonished and they said, “He has done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

The Lord takes a bit of a circuitous route to return to Galilee.  He left Tyre and proceeded north to Sidon, and then east and then south to the country around Damascus, which is where the events in the Gospel reading for today’s Mass seems to take place.  The region at that time was inhabited mostly by Arameans and other semites, but was dominated by the Greek and Roman culture of its ten major cities, which enjoyed a special status within the Roman Empire.  Now, due to the grammar of the verse describing the Lord’s movements, some of the Fathers concluded that this miracle did not take place in the Decapolis itself but in Galilee near the frontier.  This actually makes more sense than if if it had taken place in the Decapolis, since the people who learned of the healing reacted as though they had seen his miracles before.

“And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him.”  They brought the man to him because they wished to see a miracle, as we see from the fact that Jesus took the man apart from them — something he did not do otherwise.  This man suffered from a double infirmity.  His deafness and speech impediment may have come to him at once through a head injury, or he may have been born with a speech impediment and then lost his hearing in childhood.  The impediment may have been a stutter or an inability to form any coherent sound at all.  “He took him off by himself away from the crowd.”  Despite the crowd’s vulgar desire to see miracles, the Lord desired to heal the man out of his compassion for him.  Evidently, he took him out of the range of the crowd’s hearing, or even out of their sight, perhaps on the other side of a hill.  “He put his finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue.”  These gestures of the Lord are highly unusual, and since they are unnecessary, strictly speaking, for the cure, he must be teaching the Apostles through this sign.  The use of the saliva may be related to an earlier verse in Mark’s Gospel in which the Evangelist tells us that people sought to be cured of their maladies by touching even the fringe of his mantle.  The point is that the power of the Lord Jesus was such that it extended even to his tassels and his saliva.  

“Then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him, ‘Ephphatha!’ ” (that is, “Be opened!”).  This is an Aramaic word.  The fact that Mark gives us the exact word that Jesus spoke here is a testament to how its use must have struck St. Peter, who related the miracle to Mark long afterwards.  Mark’s quoting the word, even without the translation, does not make sense unless it had some special meaning for his original — Greek-speaking — audience.  This special meaning undoubtedly came from its use in a baptismal ritual Peter himself used.  In the ancient baptismal rite of the Church, which was altered in the early 1970’s, before the baptism the priest touches the nostrils (in place of the lips) and the ears of the candidate for baptism, moistened with his saliva, at the same time saying, “Ephphatha which means, be opened.”  The new rite of baptism also includes the touching of the person’s ears and lips, though after the baptism and without the priest’s saliva, but without the Ephphatha.  Instead, the priest says to the newly baptized: “The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the dumb speak. May he soon touch your ears to receive his word, and your mouth to proclaim his faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father.”  The loss of the Aramaic word is unfortunate because its use was ancient.  More importantly, it was used not only to address the candidate for baptism, but also heaven.  “Be opened” was a command from the priest as alter Christus, telling the heavens to open for the one about to be baptized. 

“And immediately the man’s ears were opened, his speech impediment was removed, and he spoke plainly.”  There is no period of recovery.  The Lord’s power is instant and completely effective.  The people of the crowd will acknowledge this when they say, “He has done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”  

“He ordered them not to tell anyone. But the more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it.”  Jesus gives the gifts of hearing and speaking to the man without condition.  His gifts are as free as they are complete.  But he does warn the crowd to not spread the news of the cure around.  The Lord may have given this order for a number of reasons.  As when he commanded demons not to speak about him “because they knew him”, the Lord may not have desired the testimony of these particular people.  This would speak to their character, of which we gain some insight due to the fact that they disobeyed the command of the one who had shown such mercy.  But the Lord lavishes his gifts upon the unworthy as well as on those who truly love him because the nature of love is to love without expecting to be loved in return. 

 Thursday in the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time, February 11, 2021

Mark 7:24-30

Jesus went to the district of Tyre. He entered a house and wanted no one to know about it, but he could not escape notice. Soon a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him. She came and fell at his feet. The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, “Let the children be fed first. For it is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” She replied and said to him, “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.” Then he said to her, “For saying this, you may go. The demon has gone out of your daughter.” When the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

St. Matthew also recounts this episode in his Gospel (15, 22-28).  From his account, the woman began by following the Lord on the road and calling after him.  It seems, from St. Mark’s version, that she followed him to the house in which he was staying at the time, and spoke to him there.  

Mark prefaces his account by saying that “[the Lord] entered a house and wanted no one to know about it, but he could not escape notice.”  It is noteworthy that he (1) went up to Tyre, which was gentile territory, and (2) was staying at “a house”.  Matthew says that he “withdrew” or “departed” to this country, but he does not explain why anymore than Mark does.  At the same time, he must have stayed at the house of a fellow Jew.  Because he “wanted no one to know” that he was there, he does not seem to have preached in any synagogues in the area, so he would not have met any fellow Jews who might have invited him to stay with him.

Despite the Lord’s desire for anonymity, “he could not escape notice”.  News of the Jew who performed miracles and drove out demons had gone out far and wide.  We read in Matthew 4, 24 that even in his early ministry, “his fame went throughout all Syria.”  This would have included the land of Tyre and Sidon.  Perhaps some who had come to Galilee from this foreign land to be cured by him told about him when they returned to their homes, and then recognized him on the streets when he arrived there and pointed him out to others.  Perhaps the lesson the Lord meant to teach his Apostles here was that with the beginning of their preaching after Pentecost, the Faith he was handing on to them would spread like wildfire throughout the world, and that they would enter a region for the first time and find that believers already existed there.  This is a result of “casting seed”: the farmer casts it in all directions and harvests it wherever it grows.  

“Soon a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him.”  We know from previous accounts in Mark that wherever the Lord went in Galilee, crowds gathered quickly with their sick — even anticipating his arrival in places.  No tendency to reticence prevented anyone from bringing their sick or otherwise afflicted relatives and friends to him.  People even came together to carry the lame to him.  A single sighting of the Lord proved sufficient to throw a whole area into upheaval as folks rushed to him from all sides.  The same might have been expected in this gentile land as well, but even if the Lord’s reputation had become known this far from home, only this woman approached him for help.  

Mark does not tell us, as Matthew does, that the Apostles attempted to have the Lord send her away.  His interest is simply in what transpired between the Lord and this woman and so he streamlines his account.  Now, we notice here that the woman came by herself.  Like the centurion who came to Jesus on behalf of his slave, who was sick, or Jairus, who went to him for his daughter, this woman comes for one who cannot come herself, so terrible is her condition.  Perhaps this girl is tied up as the man possessed by Legion had been, though it had not lasted long in his case.  Binding a demon-possessed person or a lunatic was in those days the last-ditch method of preventing their harming themselves or others.  It was an ancient form of the sedation through drugs we use today.  “She came and fell at his feet.”  She, the heir of the proud Phoenician culture, humbled herself before a Jew from the hinterland, and begged for his help.  Her posture is one adopted before the eastern kings who were acclaimed as semi-divine, or as a slave before her master.  She offered true homage to him as had not been offered anywhere else he had gone.  We do not see the people of Capernaum doing this before him.  Jesus tested her homage, not because he doubted it, but to make this point to his Apostles: “Let the children be fed first. For it is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.”  The woman, remaining on the ground before him and covering her head, as was the practice, accepted his calling her a “dog”, for as she had humbled herself as a slave, she showed that she was willing to be addressed as such, if only he would deign to speak to her at all.

  She bravely replied, “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”  Jesus did not keep her in suspense.  “For saying this, you may go. The demon has gone out of your daughter.”  He dismisses her, with her request granted.  She comes to him as a slave, believing that all, including the demons, were likewise his slaves.  He need not render himself unclean by entering her house to help her daughter; he need only give the command, even from afar, and it would be carried out.  

And then she went home, backing out of the house from before Jesus because one never showed one’s back to a king or a master.  Hurrying home at all speed, “she found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.”  Jesus had rewarded her faith.  And it was true faith, greater than anyone that had been shown the Lord to this point in Israel, for this is the first time in the Gospel of St. Mark that anyone had addressed Jesus as “Lord”.  

 Wednesday in the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time, February 10, 2021

Mark 7:14-23

Jesus summoned the crowd again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand. Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile.”  When he got home away from the crowd his disciples questioned him about the parable. He said to them, “Are even you likewise without understanding? Do you not realize that everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters not the heart but the stomach and passes out into the latrine?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) “But what comes out of the man, that is what defiles him. From within the man, from his heart, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile.”

The Gospel reading for today’s Mass follows immediately after that for yesterday’s Mass.  The Lord Jesus had answered the complaint made by the Pharisees that his Apostles did not ritually purify their hands before eating, as though they were priests offering sacrifice in the Temple.  The Lord rejected their attempt to force people to abide by their interpretation of the Mosaic Law which in fact contradicted that Law.  Now, he seizes the occasion to teach the Apostles and the crowd the true meaning of impurity, as opposed to the ritual impurity that so concerned the Pharisees.

“Hear me, all of you, and understand.”  The Lord gains the people’s attention and makes it clear that what he is about to tell them is important for them to hear.  He has just overthrown the false teaching of the Pharisees, but he is not interested in scoring points off them.  His zeal for the souls of all people compels him to speak of the evil of sin, and the evil caused by sin, for their own good.  “Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile.”  This must have come as a great revelation at the time.  Jewish life was bound up with exterior actions, performing a prescribed act correctly and at the right time.  These actions, including circumcision, keeping the Sabbath, and the purity laws, identified a person as a Jew.  Proper behavior, then, came out of a sense of duty, and of the desire to belong to the Chosen People.  The Lord spoke during his Sermon on the Mount that attitude and rightness of intention mattered at least as much as exterior actions, identifying lustful thoughts as acts of adultery if no actions outside the mind resulted.  He continues that line of teaching here, emphasizing the evil that afflicted the sinner long after the sin was committed.

“Do you not realize that everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters not the heart but the stomach and passes out into the latrine?”  The Lord rephrases his pint here as the Apostles show slowness to understand.  He compares sin to food.  A person cannot be defiled by another’s sin, nor by thoughts or temptations that arise contrary to a person’s will — from “the outside”, as it were.  The food enters the body and then leaves it as waste.  “But what comes out of the man, that is what defiles him.”  That is, that which originates within a person defiles that person.  Jesus thus shows the full meaning of Proverbs 26, 27: “He who digs a pit shall fall into it.”  The sinner hurts himself more than he hurts another by his sin.  Lustful thoughts, as thoughts, do not harm another person directly.  They do, however, defile the person who consents to them.

This word, translated here as “to defile”, has the sense of “to pollute”, and it can mean “to make ritually impure”.  That is, such a person could not participate in Temple worship and would have to keep apart from others until he had performed the proper washing rituals.  This was a very serious matter for the Jews.  This impurity made a person incapable of the holy.  For us, it is a sign fulfilled when the Lord Jesus was driven outside the camp of his people with their sins upon him (cf. Leviticus 16, 21-22), in fact making him sin (2 Corinthians 5, 21).  The ritual impurity of the Jews is shown to be the sign of the reality of mortal sin.  

The Lord lists these mortal sins: “Evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.”  These corrupt and pollute the person who commits them and the effect does not vanish after the sin has been committed, but remains.  It is necessary to repent of our sins, to hate them, to confess them, and to do what we can to make up for them.  Failure to do so makes us unworthy of the holy — the reception of the Blessed Sacrament, and ultimately the life of heaven.  

 Tuesday in the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time, February 9, 2021

Mark 7:1-13

When the Pharisees with some scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus, they observed that some of his disciples ate their meals with unclean, that is, unwashed, hands. (For the Pharisees and, in fact, all Jews, do not eat without carefully washing their hands, keeping the tradition of the elders. And on coming from the marketplace they do not eat without purifying themselves. And there are many other things that they have traditionally observed, the purification of cups and jugs and kettles and beds.) So the Pharisees and scribes questioned him, “Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders but instead eat a meal with unclean hands?” He responded, “Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written: This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts. You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.” He went on to say, “How well you have set aside the commandment of God in order to uphold your tradition! For Moses said, Honor your father and your mother, and Whoever curses father or mother shall die. Yet you say, ‘If someone says to father or mother, “Any support you might have had from me is qorban”’ (meaning, dedicated to God), you allow him to do nothing more for his father or mother. You nullify the word of God in favor of your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many such things.”

In order to understand what is happening in the Gospel reading for today’s Mass, it helps to know a little more than what St. Mark explains about the purity laws.  While the ancient Jewish Law prescribed certain regulations regarding purity, they mostly concerned the priests and anything that had to do with the sacrifices that were commanded.  The Pharisees, however, interpreted these laws to apply to everyday life and not merely Temple worship.  Thus, up until the time of the Pharisees, there was no law regarding the washing of the hands before meals: this was ordered for the priests in the Temple concerning sacrifices.  As the views of the Pharisees spread, the practice of washing hands increased until it was taken for granted that this was commanded by the Law, when in fact it was merely the interpretation of the Law by the Pharisees.  This is why Mark is able to say that “For the Pharisees and, in fact, all Jews” practice this.  And yet, not all the Jews did.  It is very unlikely that John the Baptist and his followers did, or the zealots.  And so we see here that “some of [the Lord’s] disciples ate their meals with unclean, that is, unwashed, hands.”  

Now, the Pharisees visiting the Lord Jesus show that they themselves know that the washing of hands before meals is not required by the Law, since they say to him, “Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders but instead eat a meal with unclean hands?”  They do not say, Why do they not follow the Law.  They say, Why do they not follow the tradition of the elders.  It is as though the Pharisees expect that all Jews be Pharisees.  Jesus does not point out that neither his disciples nor he are Pharisees so as to be bound by their customs, but he makes clear that their going beyond the requirements of the law and insisting that others do so as well means breaking it.  If God wanted to make a law requiring people to wash their hands before meals, he would have done so at the time he gave the Law to Moses.  Humans are not free to impose their own restrictions and then call them God’s.  And so the Lord Jesus contrasts the commandments of God with the “traditions of men”.  He declares to them: “How well you have set aside the commandment of God in order to uphold your tradition!”  The Pharisees have made their ideology, their aims, primary to God’s Law, however they think to disguise this.  The Lord then gives a very clear example involving the Fourth Commandment and the law regarding qorban, offerings made in the Temple to God, which eventually included other kinds of gifts offered in the Temple.  The Pharisees taught and persuaded many people to believe that a person could avoid responsibility for carrying out other parts of the Law by giving money or property to the Temple.  Jesus condemns them for this because what is essential in religion is the carrying out of its laws: going beyond the intention of the Divine Lawmaker, as evidenced by what he has commanded, is to replace sacred law and with human precepts.

This has relevance for us today in that certain Church leaders are seeking to allow Catholics who are divorced and remarried outside the Church to receive Holy Communion, in violation of what the Lord teaches about marriage  Certain leaders also seek the ordination of women to Holy Orders.  These measures go way beyond the laws established by the Lord as we see in his words and in the words and practices of the Apostles.  These leaders, motivated by a political agenda, want to paper over the laws of Christ with their human precepts.  But as with other attempts to assail the Church, they will fail just as the vast Assyrian army fell to the Angel of the Lord in one night (cf. 2 Kings 19, 34-36), preserving Jerusalem from destruction.

Monday in the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time, February 8, 2021

Mark 6:53-56

After making the crossing to the other side of the sea, Jesus and his disciples came to land at Gennesaret and tied up there. As they were leaving the boat, people immediately recognized him. They scurried about the surrounding country and began to bring in the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. Whatever villages or towns or countryside he entered, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak; and as many as touched it were healed.

The city of Gennesaret was in existence at about the time of Abraham and Issac.  It was a large, fortified city on the western coast of the Sea of Galilee.  Long before the sea there was called the “Sea of Galilee”, or, later, “the Sea of Tiberias”, it was called the “Sea of Gennesaret” due to the city’s prominence.  To get to this city from Capernaum, Jesus and his Apostles would have sailed south, but not very far.  The city was situated halfway between Capernaum and Magdala.  Now, in Mark 6, 45, the Evangelist tells us that Jesus and his Apostles went from Capernaum, where the Lord had fed the five thousand, to Bethsaida, which was a little distance to the north.  Now, leaving that location, they sail down past Capernaum to Gennesaret.  The ceaseless traveling and the bearing of the hardships associated with that, such as the irregular meals, the sleepless nights, and the physical exhaustion tell us how driven Jesus was to save the human race.  It says a great deal too about the willingness of the Apostles to endure this for his sake.  We get one tiny insight into their attitude in John 6, 69, when Peter answers Christ’s question about whether they will walk away from him: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”  

“People immediately recognized him.”  These words suggest that the Lord was distinguished by his garb, as John the Baptist had been by his.  His appearance certainly did not fit in with that of a Pharisee or a high priest.  His physical features do not seem to have made him instantly recognizable.  The early Father Tertullian even tells us that he looked very ordinary, and this is backed by Isaiah 53, 3: “Despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with infirmity: and his look was as it were hidden and despised, whereupon we esteemed him not.”  

“They scurried about the surrounding country and began to bring in the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was.”  For the people, Jesus meant certain help from above.  He had never turned anyone away, and he had cured everyone who approached him.  He did not demand payment, nor did he act haughtily.  All disease fled before him.  Even the demons who had long sunk their talons into some unfortunate’s soul, screamed and fled in absolute terror.  And as eagerly as the people sought him, he more eagerly sought them.  In fact, he “scurried” about the surrounding country for them.  He let them meet him halfway, however, allowing them to come the final mile or two.  He did this to show that while he offers the grace we could otherwise not receive, we must cooperate with it.

“They laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak.”  These words speak to the Lord’s power, but also to the people’s belief in it.  “The tassel on his cloak”: these tassels or fringes hung off of the mantle the Lord wore over his knee-length tunic, the customary length for Jewish men of that place and time — only the rich wore longer tunics.  The tassels were tiny and thin, like threads or bits of string.  We might think of the Saints as tassels on the mantle of his glorified Body.  As great as they might appear to us through their words and deeds, they are tiny with respect to the Lord.  All the same, Jesus so deigns that if we “touch” one of these “tassels” with our prayers, he will hear them, for as Mark tells us: “as many as touched it were healed.”

 

 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.