5th Sunday B - February 4, 2024
A few years ago, I served as Chaplin at the Catholic House at the Chautauqua Institute. I was there for a humor week. Each week the priests at the house give a lecture on a topic. Being a week on humor I spoke on Catholic humor. (Some of you heard my talk last summer as the patio talk), the other priest chose to speak on the Humor of Jonah, but when we got there the flyer said the Humor of Job, he rewrote his talk and found some humor in Job. Today’s first reading from Job has little humor or even hope in it.
As you know, the book of Job tells the story of Job who unlike Hercules goes from Hero to zero. All Job has is taken away and he spends lots of time on the ash heap as his friends keep asking him what sin he has committed to be so punished.
What Job says today rings true for anyone who has been on this globe for a period. None of us are free from struggles and often life can seem like a flash that is over all too soon. The words of Job are words spoken by one who has lost hope. He doesn’t allow his friends to console him. He moans and mourns his situation but seeks nor receives consolation.
We have all been there. Job is in desolation. In life we easily find desolation, but we may have to seek consolation.Years ago, St. Ignatius of Loyola spoke about these two experiences. He said we experience both desolations and consolations, and they will follow one upon the other. It is easy to identify desolation. Bad news seems to travel faster than good news. We may have to seek consolations, but they will present themselves.
Consolations can be as simple as a warm hand shared with another.
In the gospel Jesus reaches out and takes the hand of Peter’s mother-in-law. (let’s call her Amatatllah, which means “servant of God.”) Other than physical healing she needed the comfort of human touch. Illness can be an isolating experience. I recently heard an interview with a doctor, she told how when she visits people in the hospital, she takes a seat or asks permission to sit on the bed, this way she is level, eye to eye with the person. Reaching out to grip Peter’s mother-in-law’s hand helped to bridge the gap between her and Jesus. They are now more or less on an equal footing. I learned when I was sick how much energy small talk can take, this is why I usually keep my visits short. I was thankful to my mom who simply sat with me and didn’t engage me in conversation.
Let’s get back to desolation and consolation. St Ignatius said they would come together. I have found that when I am experiencing desolation consolation will soon follow. Often it is something as simple as a warm hand or a kind voice. Sometimes it is necessary to look for consolation, desolations seem easier to recognize, yet consolations will come soon. When they come, they make the desolations tolerable.
Poor Job needed consolation, yet his friends simply accused him of wrongdoing as if he brought his difficulties upon himself. The book of Job rehashes many of the old, trite explanations on why bad things happen to good people. Finally God appears and speaks to Job, mainly what God says is I am God and my ways are not your ways you are not to understand. Simply place faith in me and in time all will work out.
Illness helps us to understand this. When we are ill we are reminded that we are not in charge, God is in charge, and my faith reminds me that my God loves me and all will work our in the end. Peter’s mother-in-law was ill and then she met Jesus and was well. Her healing came through the intercession of her family and friends. God sends us people to aid us in our times of need.I am standing here before you, able to see, due to the prayers and support of many people. I felt the comforting hands of many of you. Your hands and prayers provide consolation in my time of need.
John Updike summed it up well in his poem Fever
Let me share with you his words:
I have brought back a good message from the land of 102 degrees:
God exists. I had seriously doubted it before;
but the bedposts spoke of it with utmost confidence,
the threads in my blanket took it for granted,
the tree outside the window dismissed all complaints,
and I have not slept so justly for years.
It is hard, now, to convey how emblematically appearances sat
upon the membranes of my consciousness; but it is truth long known,
that some secrets are hidden from health.
After mass today we will pray for the intercession of St Blaize to deliver us from illness. The blessed candles placed on our necks will be used to intercede with God for continued health. Like Job and Peter’s mother-in -law we experience the healing power of our God.
Let us give thanks and praise to our God who delivers us from our desolation and provides us with healings and consolations.
The body content of your post goes here. To edit this text, click on it and delete this default text and start typing your own or paste your own from a different source.
How many of you recall the following hymn refrain? Misericordes sicut Pater Misericordes sicut Pater… It is the refrain from the hymn of the same title that was composed for the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, which Pope Francis opened in the first week of Advent in 2015 and concluded with the feast of Christ the King on November 20, 2016. You may recall that throughout that Jubilee Year, we opened our Masses with that hymn and sang that refrain. Misericordes sicut Pater… …Merciful like the Father …Merciful like the Father. How appropriate that on this Sunday, the second Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday, is also the weekend in which we have laid our Holy Father Pope Francis to rest, and entrusted him to the tender, eternal mercy of God the Father. It was no coincidence that Pope Francis declared the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy. Pope Francis believed Mercy is the primary expression and experience of God’s love for us, and Mercy is the primary expression and experience of the love that God calls us to share with each other. So important was his belief and trust in God’s Mercy, that when he was ordained to the order of Bishop, he took as his episcopal motto “ miserando atque eligendo ” ( which roughly translates from Latin as “having mercy, he chose him”). It is taken from a homily written by St. Bede the Venerable, an eighth-century saint and Doctor of the Church, reflecting on the call of St. Matthew by Christ to become an apostle. St. Bede wrote, “[Jesus] saw the tax collector [Matthew] and, because he saw him through the eyes of mercy and chose him, he said to him: Follow me .” So important was his belief and trust in God’s Mercy, that when Francis was elected as Pope, he kept this episcopal motto as his papal motto. This motto expresses so simply and beautifully truths of our faith: God loves us deeply; God expresses that love to us through His mercy for us in our sinfulness; and that despite our sinfulness, God calls us . God calls us to trust and hope in God’s love for us and calls us to express the same love and mercy for one another. That call is reflected also in the Gospel account of Matthew’s call to discipleship by Jesus, which concludes with Jesus challenging the Pharisees, saying “Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice'” (Mt. 9:13). Jesus challenges us in the same way. He calls the Pharisees – and us – out of ritual acts of worship and piety that are not also accompanied by acts of mercy! Jesus is clear about this. In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus says, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Lk. 6:36). In his Papal Bull announcing the Extraordinary Year of Mercy, Pope Francis describes God the Father’s mercy for us as like “that of a father or a mother, moved to the very depths out of love for their child…a “visceral” love…gush[ing] forth from the depths naturally, full of tenderness and compassion, indulgence and mercy” (Misericordiae Vultus, no. 6). He also describes God’s Divine Mercy as a ”wellspring of joy, serenity, and peace.” (MV 2). These words bring to mind the visceral atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross for our sins, when blood and water sprung forth from Christ’s side as the cleansing waters of baptism. It is that visceral sacrifice which we recall in the Divine Mercy chaplet when we pray, “O Blood and Water which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fount of mercy for us, I trust in You!” It is that cleansing sacrifice that we recall when we pray in the Anima Christi prayer, “Water from the side of Christ, wash me.” And it is that same merciful cleansing in which we hope and trust, as we place all that burdens us into the waters of God’s grace, as we have done here, symbolically, in placing our Lenten stone-burdens in this fountain of Holy Water from the Easter Vigil Baptismal pool. As we contemplate God’s Divine Mercy, we place our trust and our hope in that Divine Mercy, recalling the words our late Holy Father Pope Francis left us with: “Mercy will always be greater than any sin, and no one can place limits on the love of God who is ever ready to forgive” (MV 3); “Mercy [is] the bridge that connects God and man, opening our hearts to the hope of being loved forever” (MV 2). Misericordes sicut Pater Misericordes sicut Pater…
I have long thought that the Church gives us the two Gospel passages we hear today — the account of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem and the account of his Passion and death — for very practical reasons: this is the last Sunday before Easter when we will celebrate Christ’s Resurrection and not everyone is able to attend and celebrate the Triduum liturgies during Holy Week. Therefore, the Church places these two critical Gospel passages together so that we hear and experience them in a regular Sunday Mass setting — literally, to ‘fit them in’ before Easter. But there is another equally, if not more, important reason we are to experience these Gospel passages together. And I honestly don’t know if the Church intends this reason or not, but I believe the Holy Spirit intends it. These two Gospel passages remind us as much as any passage that Jesus Christ, while fully Divine, is also fully human. He is like us in all manner except one, in committing sin. He therefore shares with us the experience of the full range of our humanity. In these two Gospel passages we experience Christ moving from triumph to tragedy, from soaring to suffering: the triumphant, soaring entry into Jerusalem and the suffering and tragedy of His Passion and crucifixion. Christ’s human experience is also our human experience, for do not we all experience triumph and tragedy, soaring and suffering? Therefore, we do not have a God and Savior who cannot sympathize with our human experience, but rather one who shares it with us! And we have a God and Savior who not only soared and suffered for us, but soars and suffers with us. Not just two thousand years ago, but right here, right now, in every minute of our lives. For what did Jesus promise? “I am with you always , until the end of time.” (Mt 28:20) When we soar and triumph, Jesus is with us, by our side. And when we suffer and experience tragedy, especially, Jesus is with us, by our side. We are encouraged to give thanks to God in our triumphs and soaring. And we are invited to unite our suffering with Christ’s suffering and offer it up for whatever or whomever is in need. Christ’s suffering was not pointless, and united to His, neither is ours. We offer it up, trust, and hope. Sisters and brothers, that hope comes from our knowledge of the rest of the Gospel story that we will experience with Christ: that His triumph and tragedy, His soaring and suffering does not end in death, but in the glory of Easter Resurrection.
