Thoughts on healing

 

First Week in Ordinary Time

Mark 1:29–39

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus heals many of the townspeople of Capernaum. His healing of physical ailments points to his spiritual healing—to his being the doctor of the soul. The Gospels are filled with accounts of Jesus’ healing encounters with those whose spiritual energies are unable to flow. Much of Jesus’ ministry consisted in teaching people how to see (the kingdom of God), how to hear (the voice of the Spirit), how to walk (overcoming the paralysis of the heart), and how to be free of themselves (so as to discover God). Jesus was referred to in the early Church as the Savior (salvator in Latin). The term speaks of the one who brings healing—indeed, our English word salve is closely related to salvus, meaning health. When the soul is healthy, it is in a living relationship with God. When the soul is sick, the entire person becomes ill, because all flows from and depends upon the dynamic encounter with the source of being and life who is God.  We heal the soul by bringing to bear the salvator, the healer, the one who in his person reconciled us with God and opened the soul to the divine power. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on being focused

 

A Focused Life

There is something of the wanderer and something of the person who just sits there in all of us. If you look at this world you might think, “I am so tired. There is so much fatigue, so much experience of heaviness in this world, that I find myself sometimes as a wanderer and sometimes as a sitter.” It is into this deeply tired world of ours that God sends Jesus to speak the voice of love. Jesus says, “Follow me. Don't keep running around. Follow me. Don't just sit there. Follow me.” The voice of love is the voice that can completely reshape our life from a wandering or just-sitting-there life to one that is focused and has a point to go to.

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”   – Romans 12: 1, 2

More thoughts on Jesus' Baptism

 

Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

Luke 3:15–16, 21–22

Friends, this great feast of the Baptism of the Lord is a good time to reflect on the significance of the sacrament of Baptism. One of the earliest descriptions of Baptism in our tradition is vitae spiritualis ianua, which means “the door to the spiritual life.”  To grasp the full meaning of this is to understand something decisive about Christianity. For Christianity is not primarily about “becoming a good person” or “doing the right thing.” Let’s face it, anyone—pagan, Muslim, Jew, non-believer—can be any of those things. To be a Christian is to be grafted onto Christ and hence drawn into the very dynamics of the inner life of God. We don’t speak simply of following or imitating Jesus. We speak of becoming a member of his Mystical Body. Do you see why it is so important that we are baptized “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”? For Baptism draws us into the relationship between the Father and the Son, which is to say, in the Holy Spirit. Baptism, therefore, is all about grace, our incorporation, through the power of God’s love, into God’s own life. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on the Baptism of Jesus

 

Gospel accounts of Jesus’ Baptism are quite brief, but behind them is a lot of history and imagery. Prior to Jesus’s entry, people were going to John in the wilderness and were being immersed by him in the river Jordan, from which they emerged as “baptized.”  This action evoked memories of the “baptism” which the Jewish people experienced in the time of Moses when they first entered the Promised Land.  Doing so, they emerged from slavery and homelessness and were re-established in their identity as God’s Chosen People.

In St. Luke’s gospel, we hear John the Baptist assert that it is not he but the Christ who is coming who will baptize with true authority and power.  Then, almost as an afterthought, we are told that Jesus was among those who submitted themselves to John’s baptism.   We are also told that as Jesus participated in this ritual of re-entrance into the vocation of Israel, the divine Spirit came upon him, and a heavenly voice named him as the beloved and favored Son.

The celebration of the baptism of Jesus is in large and practical sense the celebration of the Spirit of Jesus in which we his followers are called to live, today, right now.  As Jesus comes forth from the water, he undertakes a mission that will be fulfilled ultimately through others… and that includes us! It is a mission to bring the justice and peace, the love and mercy, of God to the peoples of the earth.  It is practiced by bringing those gifts to the people I encounter here and now, in my work, in my play, in my family, in the store, etc.

As we again thank God for the gift of the Savior and his saving mission, we might consider two questions: (1) In what ways do I know myself as beloved of God, the object of God’s delight?; and, (2) Experiencing myself as “favored,” what gifts is the Spirit prompting me to use to foster the mission of Jesus, his Beloved Son, among those whose paths will cross my own today? 

-Fr. Frank Reale, SJ

Thoughts on the Feeding of the 5000

 

Mark 6:34–44

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus feeds the five thousand. There is no better exemplification in the Scriptures of what I have called the loop of grace. God offers, as a sheer grace, the gift of being, but if we try to cling to that gift and make it our own, we lose it. The hungry people who gather around Jesus in this scene are symbolic of the hungry human race, starving from the time of Adam and Eve for what will satisfy. In imitation of our first parents, we have tried to fill up the emptiness with wealth, pleasure, power, honor, the sheer love of domination—but none of it works, precisely because we have all been wired for God and God is nothing but love. It is only when we conform ourselves to the way of love that we are filled. Thus, the five loaves and two fish symbolize that which has been given to us, all that we have received as a grace from God. If we appropriate it, we lose it. But if we turn it over to Christ, then we will find it transfigured and multiplied, even unto the feeding of the world. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on the Epiphany

 

Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord

Matthew 2:1-12

Friends, the story of the Magi told in today’s Gospel is a summary of the principal dynamics of the spiritual life. Watching the night sky with scrupulous attention for signs of God’s purpose, the Magi evoke the importance of alertness in the spiritual order. We must keep our eyes open to see what God is up to.  Once they saw the star, they moved, despite the length of the journey. Sometimes people know what God wants them to do, but they don’t act, either out of fear, laziness, or the influence of bad habits. The Magi teach us to move.  When they spoke to Herod of the birth of a new King, he tried to use them to destroy the baby. When you walk the path that God has laid out for you, expect opposition.  The wise men came to Bethlehem and gave the child their precious gifts. When you come to Christ, break open the very best of yourself and make it a gift for him.  Finally, they returned to their home country by another route. As Fulton Sheen commented so magnificently: of course they did; for no one comes to Christ and goes back the same way he came! Bishop Robert Barron

What are we looking for?

 

Memorial of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, Religious

John 1:35-42

Friends, in today’s Gospel, two of John the Baptist’s disciples follow Jesus and encounter him. Jesus’ question to the two young men—“What are you looking for?”—is an indispensably important one. Many people go through life not really knowing what they most fundamentally want, and accordingly, they drift. The correct answer to Jesus’ question is “eternal life” or “friendship with God” or “holiness.” This is the simple, clear, unambiguous articulation of the end goal that any believer should have as he endeavors to lead his life. Now, other people may know more or less what they want spiritually, but they lack the courage and attention to pursue that end in the face of distractions and opposition. They know that they should be growing in holiness, but the secular culture proposes sex, pleasure, power, and honor so attractively that they lose their way. Or perhaps they receive withering criticism from those who are stuck in the old, standard way of life, and they give in. What are we looking for? Bishop Robert Barron