To Listen: Download Show
February B. “Traveling with Jesus” is based on the 4th-7th Sundays of Ordinary Time. It takes you on a short journey that can last a lifetime. It discusses how the Lord chose to spend his days as he lives the kingdom life, teaching, healing, praying and moving on.
My child, as you trust in you God you shall receive your needs fulfilled. For your next radio program:
- Preach love beyond weariness to the people. I Am has patience for his people. As you wait on the Lord, Jesus waits for you and greets you in power and in love.
- As you walk the miles with Jesus note his concerns. Prayer with the Father is always a priority.
- Healing the physical body parallels the healing of the spiritual—through forgiveness of sins. Appearance before the priest signifies the authority of
God that ‘ratifies’ the healing, the forgiveness. Repentance brings immediate relief but the priest is necessary to rejoin the community which was protected from harm by the separation. - The inclination to seek healing is overwhelming for those in need. How joyous the Lord when the sinner seeks healing rather than hiding.
- Weariness comes from the weight of lack of repentance yet the Lord sets this aside and promises to ‘remember your sins no more’. How gracious and loving God is!
- We are invited to travel with Jesus. Pausing to pray, calling upon the power of God for healing and preaching the Good News to all who are attracted to the blessings of healing and to those who genuinely call on the Lord as Father and Savior.
- Why must we seek the Lord to find him? Why does he not come and find us like the lost sheep? The Lord does look for us when we are lost and sends many “shepherds” to look for us; however, unless we in turn look for him we will wander farther and farther into the darkness.
- By seeking him we prove the need for him and a place in our hearts, in our lives, carved out to make room for him and his love and power. In his divinity He can be always with us, but by our freewill we can squeeze him out of our hearts, out of our lives.
- Making Jesus a part of our daily lives is not extremely difficult. Peter’s mother-in-law got up through healing and did what she was called to do—cook for Jesus and his followers. Is this difficult? Is this beyond our capabilities?
- When called to preach, Paul lets us know it is like taking your next breath. Woe to him who refuses to breathe! Each day the Lord gives us opportunities to live the gospel.
- Are you willing to seek him out?
OTL 1-3-2009
Transcript LSC Feb B Season of Walking With Jesus
Recorded 1/16/09
Patti Brunner: Welcome to Living Seasons of Change, a program that takes the Sunday readings and finds a connection that directs us in our walk with Jesus. I’m Patti Brunner and my co-host is Msgr. David LeSieur. Welcome, Monsignor.
Msgr. David LeSieur: Thank you, Patti. Today we will continue to look at the beginning of Ordinary Time with the 4th through the 7th Sundays that fall between the Epiphany and Lent. We find ourselves “Traveling with Jesus”. Although it can be a life-long journey, being with him keeps us from weariness.
Patti Brunner: Sometimes as we journey with Christ we get ahead of Him. We go off and do things on our own. We get worn out if we try to do it ourselves. Jesus is calling us to wait on Him.
Msgr.: Yes, He wants to walk with us; yet, sometimes, like you say, we will run ahead of Him thinking, “I can do this on my own.” Or we will lag behind because something distracts us and we go off and Jesus has to either come back to get us or He waits until we catch up.
Patti Brunner : The Lord has patience! As you wait on the Lord, Jesus waits for you and greets you in power and in love. In the gospels this season we’re at the right place at the right time! On the 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Mark’s gospel brings us with Jesus to Capernaum. There Jesus is in the synagogue teaching new ideas with authority. The local synagogues were places for religious assembly and also used as schools, libraries and halls of judgment.[i]
Msgr. David LeSieur: I think it’s interesting the demons know who He is. Later on, He will ask His disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”[ii] and they will say “You are the Messiah.” The demons already know Him as the Holy One of God but Jesus doesn’t want them to say anything about it.
Patti: He is encountering so many people that are wearied with illness and demons, as He begins His ministry. They have been burdened with sin and he brings relief as He travels to Capernaum a town of Galilee. His love takes people beyond weariness.
Msgr.: As He taught in the synagogue, Mark chapter one says, “They were astonished at the teaching.”[iii] He had authority. He healed the unclean person with the unclean spirit and people are amazed. Jesus teaches with authority and His fame spread everywhere.
Patti: All our gospels in this season come from the first and second chapters of Mark. As we look at each gospel, we see the healings and the driving out of demons during this section of ordinary time. The healings become a tremendous evangelization tool of spreading the word of God.
Msgr.: But He tells people to be quiet.
Patti: I know. I know.
Msgr.: It’s the ironic thing. He tells the demons, of course, to be quiet. They know who He is but they don’t understand Him. They know he is the Holy One of God because He has power. He’s more powerful than they are. They respect power but they don’t understand that His power leads to the cross. They would never get that. He tells people when He heals them, “Don’t say anything to anybody.” Of course, they blab it everywhere. They will say, “Jesus healed me. He is a healer.” But there is more to Jesus than that. He knows they don’t understand but they are so enthused about that one aspect of His ministry, healing, Miracle working. It is easy to misinterpret why He came. He didn’t come just to take care of those immediate problems. He came to do more than that.
Patti Brunner: As we walk the miles with Jesus we note his concerns. He chooses future leaders of the Church, to be disciples. At the synagogue He teaches about the kingdom, preaching the word of God and He frees those tormented by demons. Compassionately, He heals the people burdened by illness. Visiting Simon Peter’s house He heals Simon’s mother-in-law.
Msgr.: Then, He heals all these people that come to Him at sunset because the Sabbath is over. His healings are signs of the power of the kingdom. Jesus traveled from one town to the next, doing the Father’s will and doing His purpose. But, along the way, He stopped to rest[iv] and He finds sustenance in prayer. Just like He had to eat, He also had to pray. Prayer with the Father is always a priority.
Patti: As we travel, Jesus is calling each of us to come apart with Him, to come apart and meet with the Father. Jesus shows us how ministering to the Father is as important as ministering to the people.
Msgr.: Ministering to the Father – you might explain that term.
Patti: I got an understanding of it when I was called, in January 2003, to spend a year of quiet from public ministry. I learned to focus my time and talents directly on the Lord. During that time I studied the reading of the ten virgins and the bridegroom – the 5 wise virgins had lamp oil for the bridegroom and they did not share with the other five but they saved what they had to go out and welcome the bridegroom[v]. There is a time that we save what we have, our best, to give or minister unto the Lord
Msgr.: It’s not doing for Him. He is the provider of our gifts.
Patti: Right, but we are giving what we have, what we are, to Him. So, instead keeping everything for ourselves—which is selfishness, instead “ministering to others”, giving everything we have for others, which is a very good thing, we are giving the best of us to the Lord. At the end of the year I was much more able to allow the Lord to choose the direction of my service to others. I spent the next three years ministering at the Juvenile Detention Center, and then began working with radio ministry. Two of the most precious gifts that God has given us are our time and the ability to pray.
Msgr.: Time is an unrepeatable resource. Prayer is our personal relationship with the living and true God.[vi] Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God”[vii]
Patti Brunner: As you trust in God your needs are fulfilled. Early the next morning, Jesus gets up and goes to pray. Like you said, prayer with the Father is always a priority no matter how busy Jesus is. Then, they find Him again. Instead of returning to the past day’s location and the comfort of Peter’s house, Jesus starts all over, strengthened by his prayer time. In the Gospel on 5th Sunday, Jesus says, “Let’s go to the other towns so I may preach there, too.” He keeps moving.
Msgr.: He told them, “Let us go unto nearby villages so I may preach there, also. For this purpose I have come.”[viii] It’s like He had done all He could do in Peter’s village, Capernaum. So, He goes down the road to the next one, “That I may preach there, also.” “That’s what I came for so let’s go do it.”
Patti: What’s He preaching? He’s preaching the kingdom?
Msgr.: Yes, the kingdom. He also expounds the teachings of the Old Testament. We see that clearly on the 6th Sunday of Ordinary time when we have the connecting readings from the Book of Leviticus and Mark’s Gospel about lepers.
Patti: In the first reading on the 6th Sunday, we get the teaching from Leviticus chapter 13[ix] that tells the people that if they developed skin conditions that might be leprosy they had to go show themselves to the priest. If the priest declared you unclean you had to separate yourself and live outside the city– to keep the whole body of people safe. Leviticus later teaches that if your skin clears up then you have to have the priest tell you that you are clean. We get reference to this in the Mark’s gospel.
Msgr.: In Leviticus it says you should not touch the leper because it makes you unclean[x] for a time and Jesus touches this one. He breaks the law and, therefore, He renders Himself unclean in order to make this person clean. As we’ll hear on Ash Wednesday from Paul in 2 Corinthians, “For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him” [xi]
Patti: He wasn’t afraid to touch a man who was sick; for his benefit, He touched him.
Msgr.: He touches him and told him to go to the priest. It says the man went away and began to publicize the healing so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly. Lepers could not enter a town openly. Here, ironically, after healing the man, Jesus was like a leper himself; not because He was unclean but because the news spread of the healing of the unclean.
Patti: He can’t enter a town because of the crowds.
Msgr.: Maybe Jesus also wanted to have more privacy so he could pray and collect Himself. Even though He couldn’t enter the town openly, People just kept mobbing Him. He stays away in deserted places and they kept coming from everywhere.
Patti: Again, seeking Him out. Looking for Him. If He had gone back to the town, anybody and everybody, with little effort, would have gone up to Jesus and asked for healing. With Him out in deserted places, they have to have a very strong desire to get out and to see Him.
Msgr.: It puts it on them. Again, it is seeking out the Lord. People kept traveling to Him. It’s a continued action. They keep coming.
Patti: Getting out of your ordinary situations helps you to be more open to the gospel, just like being on a retreat. People leaving the town to come out to Him were getting away from their daily routine, their daily chores. They are stepping out in faith and so their act of faith also allows them to be healed.
Msgr.: Just like the story of the paralytic on the 7th Sunday. The friends of the paralytic have tremendous faith and commitment. They bring the paralytic to Jesus, despite the crowds, in an extraordinary way. They tear the roof open. Jesus says an extraordinary thing: “Your sins are forgiven!”
Patti: Then to prove his ability to forgive sins Jesus tells him to pick up his mat and walk. Healing the physical body thus parallels the healing of the spiritual—through forgiveness of sins. I was wondering, back to the story of the leper, the requirement to show your self to the priest, doesn’t that relate to Sacrament of Reconciliation? The part about the priest declaring you are clean?
Msgr.: That is binding and loosing. The priests have the power, the right, to say “you are clean” or to say, “You are unclean, get out of town.” So, priests can bind and loose. Appearance before the priest signifies the authority of God that ‘ratifies’ the healing, the forgiveness.
Patti: I have another question. When we sin, we affect the body of Christ very much. We are interrelated and our actions affect each other. Now, say we sin and we repent immediately. Before we get to confession, we repent and we are forgiven, but we still have to come to the priest–to be declared clean, so to speak–how does that relate to the Body of Christ?
Msgr.: In a sense, we can be forgiven in our hearts because we immediately repent. The Lord does forgive us the moment we repent. As we come to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, it is, in a way, showing ourselves to the priest. In Luke, when Jesus healed the 10 lepers he sent them to the priest. On their way, before they got ever got to the priest, they got healed. It’s like, you are healed already before you go to the priest to confess, but it is still a necessary thing because a priest represents God and he also represents the Church, the body you harmed by your sin.
Patti Brunner: It is a way of being loosed from that sin by admitting to the priest what you have done.
Msgr. David LeSieur: The priest is a double representative of God and the Church. The priest can say “yes” in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, I absolve you from sin,” but he also says, “Through the ministry of the Church, may God give you His pardon and His peace.” So, the church has to minister to you through the sacrament, through the priest.
Patti: The Lord has given us the background of going before the priest in both the Old Testament and the New Testament; we get that correlation with the leper going to the priest. Like you said, lepers were separated from the community. In the same way, if you have serious sin you are separated from the community by not being allowed to receive Holy Communion. You should disconnect yourself from receiving Holy Communion because you would bring that sin into the Body of Christ. Repentance brings immediate relief but the priest is necessary to rejoin the community which was protected from harm by the separation.
Msgr.: If you receive Holy Communion while you are guilty of mortal sin, what you are saying is “I’m connected to the Body” but you are really not. It is a lie. You are lying to the Body of Christ but you are also lying to the Eucharistic Body of Christ, which compounds the sin.
======Break=======
Patti Brunner: Welcome back, I’m Patti Brunner and I’m talking with Msgr. David LeSieur about the “Season of Walking with Jesus” and the good news that just as Jesus could heal the outer body of the paralyzed man and the leper, He heals our inner body, our inner self, our soul through the forgiveness of sin.
Msgr.: Certainly! Basically, it’s what He came to do. I think His outer healings were symbols. They are real healings but they are symbolic of what He does on the inside. If He can heal that, He can also heal this.
Patti: The inclination to seek healing is overwhelming for those in need. When people have issues with their body, especially serious illnesses like cancer or a stroke or a heart attack, they look for help.
Msgr.: They go to the doctor.
Patti: They take the medicine. They have the operation. They do whatever is possible to relieve it, but when people are in sin, the choice is not always there to step forward to seek forgiveness, to seek healing and reconciliation through repentance.
Msgr.: I think when your body is sick, pain usually is the factor that gets you to do something about it. If it hurts badly enough, you’ll do something about it. Sin can cause spiritual pain, although I’m not sure people often recognize that for what it is. They might feel depressed or sad. They might try to cover it over with something, like going on a shopping spree. What do they call that? Therapeutic shopping? Everyone does it. Or they try to cover it with drugs or alcohol; yet, they are not getting to the problem. Hopefully, they will finally see, “I have a spiritual problem here. I’m spiritually sick and I must get healed.”
Patti: Sometimes, it might take a while to realize you are seriously, physically sick. You might take a pain reliever and feel a little bit better and mask the larger problem.
Msgr.: You might have something bad growing inside you and not realize it until it is too late. When the pain gets bad enough, you do something.
I’m trying to think of an instance in the Gospel when a spiritually sick person came to the Lord. The woman caught in adultery—she didn’t come for physical healing. In fact, they were going to kill her. She didn’t come to Jesus on her own. They dragged her to Him but she allowed Him to forgive her. Even the man who was paralyzed didn’t come to be forgiven. He came to be healed.
Patti: How about the woman at the well?
Msgr.: I don’t think she realized, either, until the conversation progressed and she finally realized who she was talking to.
Patti: Maybe that’s it. If we are steeped in sin we don’t realize how much better we would feel if we just used Dr. Jesus. So, I recommend to all our listeners to go to reconciliation whether you think you need it or not because you will find how much better you will feel with it.
If you are walking closely beside Christ and mess up, that pain is there very quickly.
Msgr.: The closer you are to Him, the quicker you realize, “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that.” Much more so than if you are lax in your relationship!
Patti: The more we justify our actions; the farther we get away from traveling with Jesus, that’s when we hide our sin. How joyous the Lord when the sinner seeks healing rather than hiding.
The 7th Sunday has the paralytic coming down through the roof. His friends are the intercessors, the ones who carry him to Jesus for healing.
Msgr.: I think that is interesting. Sometimes friends do bring people to the Lord. I’m trying to get into the mind of the man who was paralyzed. I don’t think he necessarily came to be forgiven yet that is the first thing Jesus says, “My son, your sins are forgiven.” And he is just laying there, forgiven, but not able to move. When the scribes were asking themselves, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Jesus asks, “Which is easier to say “your sins are forgiven or get up and walk?” It’s much easier to say “your sins are forgiven”. Anybody can say it. But to put some meat behind it, try saying, “Well, get up and walk.” Maybe the man who was healed realized that sin could be a paralysis, too.
Patti Brunner: I’m sure the paralytic was weary of lying on his cot, day after day. Maybe his weariness pushed him to ask his friends to carry him up on the roof. I doubt if they had ever done that before. They acted in hope of a breakthrough—not just in the roof but in his condition. In the first reading on the 7th Sunday of Ordinary Time from the Old Testament prophet, Isaiah chapter 43, we have that term “I’m doing something new.”[xii]
Msgr.: You know, when the Lord says, “Remember not the events of the past…I am doing something new”, He’s talking about the Exodus. He says, “I’m doing something even better than that, now.” He says, “In the desert I make a way; in the wasteland, rivers… The people I formed for Myself.” He formed them in the desert after the Exodus. “You grew weary of Me, O Israel.”[xiii] “You burdened Me with your sins and wearied me with your crimes.” As they traveled through the desert they were not completely faithful. “It is I, who wipe them out, for your own sake; your sins I remember no more.”
Patti: This is very much about repentance. God says, “You didn’t call on Me. You grew weary of Me. You were full of sin. You turned your back on Me. But, hey, I’m doing something new; I’m wiping out the sins.” Their weariness comes from the weight of lack of repentance yet the Lord sets this aside and promises to ‘remember your sins no more’. How gracious and loving God is!
Msgr.: Jesus is doing something new in the Gospel. He is giving this man lowered through the roof, new life, spiritually as well as physically. Anytime we celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation, there is a renewal. You do feel unburdened. You do feel new, clean, after that sacrament.
Patti: To borrow from our previous show, you get a do over.
Msgr.: Yes. A do over. a redo.
Patti Brunner: We are invited to travel with Jesus. We have got to keep moving, listening to Christ, imitating what he does in the gospel.
Msgr. David LeSieur: The time Jesus spends in prayer is important. He is busy. He is healing. People are coming to Him. He’s casting out demons and healing the sick and the lame and the blind and all that. Then He goes off quietly in prayer not only to rest, but probably to say, “Okay, this is what it is all about.” He connects with the Father. He is recharging Himself. I think it would be easy for a person like Jesus who has all these gifts to get out of focus: People were after Him like a movie star. Movie stars forget who they are most of the time. They need time to come back and remember who they are. Jesus stopped to pray often. He never forgot who He was; even though other people misunderstood Him, He didn’t misunderstand Himself or His role.
Patti Brunner: Pausing to pray is also important for us. Prayer is absolutely necessary for calling upon the power of God, for healing as well as for preaching the Good News to all who are attracted to the blessings of healing, and to those who genuinely call on the Lord as Father and Savior.
And it’s so important to get away from distractions, too. It’s easy to be distracted no matter where you – even when you are alone, sometimes. Or maybe even more so when you are alone.
Msgr.: Our minds are filled with buzzes, then.
Patti: I notice that Simon and those who were with Jesus pursued Him and found Him and said, “Everybody is looking for you.”
Msgr.: One translation says “they managed to track Him down.” It’s like they got up and said, “Where is Jesus? I don’t know, let’s go and find Him.”
Patti: I think that is a good thing that people kept looking for Him because we are called to seek Jesus. People might think, “Isn’t Jesus supposed to be looking for us?” Why must we seek the Lord to find him? Why doesn’t he come and find us like the lost sheep?
Msgr.: I think we have to look for Him. I think that it is important for Him to know that we would seek Him out.
Patti: I agree. Basically, He does send people out to look for us. How else could these crowds even know to look for Him? Someone told them what Jesus was about and what Jesus had been doing so that word of mouth gathered the crowd to go look for Him. In this way, Jesus is sending someone out to look for us. He sends his shepherds as evangelizers to look for us.
Msgr.: You could look at it on a very basic level where the disciples would say, “Where is He? Let’s go find Him because we don’t want Him to get away. He’s too important.” Or “we like what He did for us the night before.” On the spiritual level, you could say, “We do miss Him. We want Him here and we should go looking for Him.”
Patti: If we don’t look for Jesus, He can’t find us. It’s like a child that’s lost in the woods. If you go after that child, but the child keeps going farther away from you, the child won’t be found. But if the child is listening for your voice and you call his name and he hears your voice, he is either going to stand still and wait for you to find him or he is going to come toward the voice. Unless we in turn and look for Jesus we will wander farther and farther into the darkness.
Msgr.: I think that if we look for the Lord, that tells Him that we have made a space in our hearts and He knows that we want Him there. He wants to be there anyway; there is no question of that. If we are looking for Him; if we are making time to go pray, go to the chapel and have a prayer time that is routine in every day; that tells Him we want to be with Him and I think He honors that. I think He blesses us.
Patti Brunner: By seeking him, we prove our need for him and a place in our hearts, in our lives, is carved out to make room for him and his love and power. In his divinity He can be always with us, but by our freewill we can squeeze him out of our hearts, out of our lives.
We squeeze him out of our hearts when we are full of anxiety and distraction. The 2nd reading, on the 4th Sunday from 1 Corinthians chapter seven, talks about being “free from anxieties”[xiv], “free from distraction”. When we are full of anxieties, it’s a block to looking for Jesus.
Msgr.: To me an anxious person is someone who thinks, “I have to do all this and I can’t do it.” They may be afraid. Anxieties, I think, overwhelm us. When we feel like, “I have to do this and I can’t.” It’s a hopeless feeling. Maybe at that point they finally realize, “Well, I need to find someone to help me with it” and, hopefully, they go looking for the Lord and ask for His help. In hindsight we say, “I should have realized this long ago that God can help me.”
Patti Brunner: Making Jesus a part of our daily lives is not extremely difficult. On the 5th Sunday we hear that Peter’s mother-in-law got up, through healing, and did what she was called to do—cook for Jesus and his followers. Is this difficult? Is this beyond our capabilities?
Msgr. David LeSieur: The mother-in-law – this has always been one of my favorite passages from Mark, Chapter 1 verses 29 to 39. At Peter’s house Jesus shows us how important friends and family are. He brings healing to Peter’s mother-in-law; but she doesn’t sit back at His feet and listen to Him preach, she gets up and cooks supper for them. Taking care of family—that is an important role for women and men to have.
Patti: Also on the 5th Sunday is Paul’s reading to I Corinthians from chapter 9. Paul says he’s called to preach and he has to do it because he is called to do it. He says it is no blessing to him if he does it unwillingly.
Msgr.: Look at what Jesus said about preaching, he said, “That is why I came.” When they found Him in the deserted place, He said, “That is why I came in the first place.” Paul tells the Corinthians, “Woe, if I don’t preach.” That’s why he came, too.
Patti: When called to preach, Paul lets us know it is like taking your next breath. Woe to him who refuses to breathe! It’s so much of who he is and who he was called to be.
Msgr.: I think many priests probably would say the same thing, preaching is one of the things they like the best about being a priest.
Patti: I know that with the priest shortage, your duties have expanded greatly. So, how do you keep on line with the preaching and not allow all the busyness, all the waiting on tables, so to speak, to interfere?
Msgr.: I’ve always made time to prepare for preaching. Even if I have lots to do, I’ll make sure I have time to prepare a homily. There are times when I read the gospel and an idea will hit me just like “that” and I can expand on it and it doesn’t take a whole lot of time. It’s a grace from the Lord when that happens. Other times, I just have to research and read and think and dig. I enjoy doing that, too. I really enjoy homily preparation. I look forward to it. It’s such an opportunity. You can never exhaust the meaning of a passage. Even preachers who preach 30, 40 minutes, or an hour, they never exhaust it.
A friend of mine is a Presbyterian pastor who is very serious about his homily preparation. He said when a pastor preaches he is telling the people, in so many words, “This is as much as I understand of the Gospel at this moment. At this point in my preparation, I had to stop and preach it to you.”
Patti Brunner: That’s an interesting way of looking at it.
Msgr. David LeSieur: It’s like “This is as much as I can tell you right now from what I know of this passage. It should be enough for the time being.” Three years later you are going to preach the same scriptures and you’ll have more to say.
Patti: Have the three-year cycles of liturgical readings been in place your entire priesthood or, when you were first ordained, was it different?
Msgr.: No. We’ve used the three year liturgical cycles at Sunday Mass ever since 1970. Maybe even before that. I was ordained in ’76.
Patti: You say you sometimes do a lot of research. How does that build from cycle to cycle every three years?
Msgr.: I never keep a homily. So, it’s fresh every time I get to it; new research every time.
Patti: That keeps you open to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Do you see things differently? Do you catch yourself thinking, “Gosh, that’s not how I saw it last time around?”
Msgr.: Sometimes, yes. I keep the same books that I refer to and I might be getting the same ideas from those books as I use them again. I don’t want to have to dust off an old homily and say, “I’ll just use this one this year.” I don’t ever want to do that. I try to keep my mind open to a new idea. Even if I use the same books, and the same footnotes in the Bible, I have different experiences from cycle to cycle and I think I can resonate differently with what it is saying.
Patti Brunner: Traveling with Jesus can vary even if we cover the same ground, as long as we stay open to his Holy Spirit. Each day the Lord gives us opportunities to live the gospel. He gives us the opportunity to follow Him. He gives us the opportunity to pray. He gives us the opportunity to heal and be healed. We are attracted to the Lord for the healings, for the grace and, yet, as we genuinely call on the Lord, we get fullness of Grace. We get well beyond whatever we were seeking to begin with. We may be looking for relief from painful situations, release of the weariness, but He gives us so much more than that.
Msgr.: Much more, yes! More than we would ever ask or imagine! More than we can even think about. Jesus is never anything but “yes” to us,[xv] as Paul reminds us in the first chapter of 2nd Corinthians, the second reading on the 7th Sunday. As wonderful as that is, sometimes we are insulated in such a way within our own world, in our own things, sometimes that grace doesn’t get through to us.
Patti: That’s why we have to get out of town and seek the Lord sometimes.
Msgr.: We get insulated with problems, with our own things that we like to do, our own agendas, and sometimes we aren’t even able to experience or feel the gifts that He gives us. If we take off some of that insulation, the grace can get through to us. The question is how we shuck off the insulation – by getting rid of some of the distractions and sometimes to do that, you just have to get away.
Patti: And the church liturgy itself is trying to help us to do that through all the seasons of the Liturgy including Christmas, Ordinary Time, and Lent. They call us to look at our daily walk with the Lord. They ask us, “Are you willing to seek him out?” Will you make the effort to find him as He travels in the Kingdom? Monsignor, will you close our show with a blessing?
Msgr. David LeSieur: [blessing]
Patti: Thank you Monsignor. To get a copy of the references in today’s show or to read the Liturgical readings please check the website patriarchMinistries.com and to listen to this show or previous broadcasts click paduamedia.com and Living Seasons of Change.
[i] Welcome to the Catholic Church. Harmony Media. Dictionary. Synagogue. The house of worship of the Jews of the Dispersion. Although mention is made of the synagogue in Mosaic times (Num. 4:34; 31:13), it is believed that the synagogue as a formal place of worship originated at the time of the Babylonian captivity, when worship in the Temple of Jerusalem was impossible. Sacrifice diminished in importance at this time and prayers and scriptural readings became the most common part of the religious ceremony. By the first century there were many synagogues in Palestine and a small number in Hebrew settlements outside Palestine. They were minor places of religious assembly among the Jews, used also as schools, libraries and halls of judgment.
[ii]Mark 8:29 “And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter said to him in reply, “You are the Messiah.”
[iii] Mark 1:22 “They were astonished at the teaching”
[iv] Mark 1:35 “Rising very early before dawn, he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.”
[v] Matthew 25: 1-13 Story of the Five Wise Virgins
[vi] CCC 2558 “Great is the mystery of the faith!” The Church professes this mystery in the Apostles’ Creed (Part One) and celebrates it in the sacramental liturgy (Part Two), so that the life of the faithful may be conformed to Christ in the Holy Spirit to the glory of God the Father (Part Three). This mystery, then, requires that the faithful believe in it, that they celebrate it, and that they live from it in a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God. This relationship is prayer.
[vii] CCC 2590 “Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God” (St. John Damascene, De fide orth. 3, 24: PG 94, 1089C).
[viii] NAB Mark 1:38 He told them, “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come.”
[ix] RSV Leviticus 13: “44 he is a leprous man, he is unclean; the priest must pronounce him unclean; his disease is on his head. 45 “The leper who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ 46 He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean; he shall dwell alone in a habitation outside the camp.”
[x] RSV Leviticus 22 “5 and whoever touches a creeping thing by which he may be made unclean or a man from whom he may take uncleanness, whatever his uncleanness may be– 6 the person who touches any such shall be unclean until the evening and shall not eat of the holy things unless he has bathed his body in water. 7 When the sun is down he shall be clean; and afterward he may eat of the holy things, because such are his food.”
[xi]RSV 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”
[xii], Isaiah chapter 43:19 “See, I am doing something new!”
[xiii] Isaiah 43:22 “Yet you did not call upon me, O Jacob, for you grew weary of me, O Israel.”
[xiv] 1 Corinthians 7:32-35 “be free of anxieties”
[xv] II Corinthians 1:18-22 He is never anything but “yes” to us
Outline:
Love takes us beyond weariness.
The Lord has patience for his people. As you wait on the Lord, Jesus waits for you and greets you in power and in love.
As we walk the miles with Jesus through the Gospel we note his concerns. Prayer with the Father is always a priority.
Healing the physical body parallels the healing of the spiritual—through forgiveness of sins.
Appearance before the priest signifies the authority of God that ‘ratifies’ the healing, the forgiveness. Repentance brings immediate relief but the priest is necessary to rejoin the community which was protected from harm by the separation.
The inclination to seek healing is overwhelming for those in need. How joyous the Lord when the sinner seeks healing rather than hiding.
Weariness comes from the weight of lack of repentance yet the Lord sets this aside and promises to ‘remember your sins no more’. How gracious and loving God is!
We are invited to travel with Jesus. Pausing to pray, calling upon the power of God for healing and preaching the Good News to all who are attracted to the blessings of healing and to those who genuinely call on the Lord as Father and Savior.
Why must we seek the Lord to find him? Why does he not come and find us like the lost sheep? The Lord does look for us when we are lost and sends many “shepherds” to look for us; however, unless we in turn look for him we will wander farther and farther into the darkness.
By seeking him we prove the need for him and a place in our hearts, in our lives, carved out to make room for him and his love and power. In his divinity He can be always with us, but by our freewill we can squeeze him out of our hearts, out of our lives.
Making Jesus a part of our daily lives is not extremely difficult. Peter’s mother-in-law got up through healing and did what she was called to do—cook for Jesus and his followers. Is this difficult? Is this beyond our capabilities?
When called to preach, Paul lets us know it is like taking your next breath. Woe to him who refuses to breathe! Each day the Lord gives us opportunities to live the gospel.
Are you willing to seek him out?
References and Resources:
Please note that CCC refers to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, English translation, 2 Edition,©1994, 1997. United States Catholic Conference, Inc., Libreria Editrice Vaticana. [see link]New American Bible (NAB) readings are referenced from the Lectionary for Mass, for use in the dioceses of the United States of America, second typical edition ©1997, 1970 by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. [see link]Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright ©1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. and are used by permission. All rights reserved.
Year B Readings for Season of Preparation see Liturgical Readings link
4th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Deuteronomy 18:15-20 God promised at Horeb to raise up a prophet to speak His words
1 Corinthians 7:32-35 “be free of anxieties”
Mark 1:21-28 At Capernaum Jesus taught new with authority; Jesus rebuked unclean spirit which cried out “You are the Holy One of God!” “His fame spread everywhere”
5th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Job 7:1-4, 6-7 “I am filled with restlessness until the dawn”
1 Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23 “woe if I don’t preach”
Mark 1:29-39 Simon’s mother-in-law healed, deserted place for prayer, “let us go on”
6th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46 “priest shall declare him unclean” “dwell apart”
1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1 “do everything for the glory of God” “imitate me, as I am of Christ”
Mark 1:40-45 “be made clean” “tell no one–show the priest” He remained in deserted place and people came from everywhere
7th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 43:18-19, 21-22, 24b-25 “I am doing something new” “you grew weary of Me” “your sins I remember no more”
2 Corinthians 1:18-22 “not yes and no but yes”
Mark 2:1-12 paralytic lowered from roof, “your sins are forgiven” “pick up your mat and walk”
