5TH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME
This weekend we hear from Job who believes there is nothing left for him but a life drudgery and grief. Like Job in the first reading, we all come upon times of chaos, times of stress. There are so many aspects to life for which there are no solutions especially during the COVID19 pandemic. Like Job we all experience what he called months of misery and it has been like that for so many people and countries for the past year or more as we endure COVID19 .Perhaps, we do not suffer to the extent that Job seems to have suffered, but life these days brings many challenges, including challenges to our faith that God will get us through. The Lord is aware of our difficulties. He sees our turmoil. He wants to heal us, just as he healed all those people in this weekend’s Gospel. In the Gospel Reading for this Sunday, Jesus comes to Peter’s house, he finds that Peter’s mother-in-law is sick, and he heals her. The whole town hears of her healing and rushes all their sick to Peter’s house. The house is surrounded, and so is Jesus. Now, all of a sudden, Jesus seems to have become a one-man hospital the man who heals all their ills.
He is so besieged that he can’t even pray in the house. He has to head out into the countryside secretly in the dark of morning. When his absence is detected, his disciples go looking for him. when they find him, they tell him “Everybody is looking for you!” We Christians of today have many advantages over the people of Capernaum. They saw Christ with their eyes as a man of power amongst them; we see him with the eyes of faith as he really was and is the Son of God who came on earth in order to make us the family of God. We know who he really was and we know the full meaning of his mission. We have seen that mission completed amongst us by his death on the cross and his resurrection. By his death he conquered death by his resurrection he opened the gates of heaven for us and shows us how to get there. The road we have to take is not easy and many people have chosen other roads. But I believe that people of all ages are out there looking for Jesus seeking the things of lasting value they are out there looking for Jesus and they are finding and following him. The questions of the suffering Job are not answered in the Gospel. Jesus may have his own questions about the suffering that surrounds him, as he will have his own questions when his own suffering becomes his passion on good Friday.
But whatever his questions are, Jesus stays committed to caring for the sick. That is his witness. Through the witness of Jesus we hold fast to the truth that God loves us in our weakness and fragility, in our sickness and suffering. We can see a reflection of God’s care in the commitment of doctors, nurses, healers, hospital chaplains and all the people who tend to the suffering of others especially in these times of the COVID19 pandemic. They are God’s compassion in flesh, God’s care in action on the ground. No doubt all of them have reason to wonder, to protest, to be angry when they see the innocent suffer. But they carry on. That is their enduring witness. Last Tuesday we celebrated the feast of the presentation of Jesus in the temple and we blessed the candles. The candles represent the light of Christ will we be the light of Christ in all the places and situations we will find ourselves in as we head towards the season of Lent that starts on the 17th February? Will we be the people who point others along the right roads that lead to Jesus in what we do and what we say during the season of Lent and beyond?
Fullerton T 