Come up here before us – Mk 3:1-6
Today’s Gospel accurately describes our Church"today". Of course, first describes what happened two thousand years ago - Jesus' dispute with "scribes and Pharisees" about the meaning of the Sabbath. We cannot reduce the Gospel interpretation only to historical analysis.
This Gospel is happening today in the community of the Church led by Francis. It is this Pope, from the very beginning of his pontificate, who has the courage to put a suffering man in the center of the Church. It is a precision of thought of Saint John Paul II from his first encyclical, from which we remember that man is the way for the Church, the way for her daily life. Francis clarifies: first of all, a suffering person. Like Jesus in that synagogue - Francis in the very center of our community of faith, prayer and worship, puts man in various ways disabled, handicapped, "irregular", poor, marginalized rejected. He tells him, "Get up and stand in the middle!" He puts it before our eyes.
Wait a minute - someone will say - isn't God place in the center of a community of prayer and worship? Yes, it is true. This place belongs to God. But he himself consistently introduces himself to us in the words of Chapter 25 of Matthew’s Gospel: I was hungry, thirsty, naked, on the way, in prison (...)? Whatever you did to one of the smallest ones, you did to me 'It is Christ, and after him the last popes who invites to the center (in medium) of the community of the Church thepeople harmed by himself, by other' “withered” paralyzed.
This is the tension of this event - then and today: the tension between focusing on the law and focusing on the needs of a specific person. Jesus sees these needs in a completely different way than his adversaries, they only see a withered hand. They apply familiar paragraphs to it: is this a sufficient reason to suspend the principle of Sabbath rest? Is it life threatening? He lived with it so long… Cannot wait another day or two?
Jesus perceives the man whom he ordered to stand in the center, much deeper. His level of vision is reflected in the question that Jesus asked the Pharisees: What is allowed on the Sabbath: “to save life rather than to destroy?”, which can also be translated literally, as St. Jerome in the Vulgate: "save or lose the soul? (animam salvam facere an perdere) He sees - like everyone else - a withered hand but asks about the state of the soul: about the spiritual needs, strength and condition of a disabled person. About his life - not about a hand ...
"Are you going to throw him out?"- He seems to be asking us. Convinced that his problem is trivial? We will tell him "come tomorrow?" Are you sure that he will come? Is his presence - in all truth about him - is for us a problem (legal) or a challenge and an opportunity?
God Bless America
Recent history knows cases of a special mobilization of Christians who undertake large-scale prayer actions, asking God for the needed grace. This was the case with the famous rosary revolution in the Philippines, and more recently with the prayer crusade in Hungary and in Poland, In the United State of America more and more circles take up prayers for the Homeland.
Today is a special prayer mobilization for our homeland. Through Holy Masses, the Rosary or the Novena to St. Michael the Archangel, we storm Heaven for USA.
Prayers, if come from sincere hearts and righteous conscience, are heard by God. Prayer for the Homeland that today we undertake, should be our constant task. Not only today, but always, regardless of what will be the course of events.
Perhaps our country is far from ideal. But it would be a manifestation of extreme irresponsibility to stand against our State. Therefore, each of us should try, according to his/her place in society, to contribute to the fact that our State, its laws and institutions will be as fair and friendly as possible for all its citizens. After all, the state should function in such a way that it would make it easier for all of us to love our Country.
People sometimes ask: Homeland? What is it? Well, the Motherland is a solidarity in the good and the misery through the generations. It is a community of hope, a community of country and language, history and culture - a community of the generations from which we grew up and from which we have become heirs, the generations now living and those who will come after us will in turn be our spiritual heirs. Behind this word, behind the word "Homeland", there are hardships and sacrifices made over the generations, defeats and victories, joys and successes which today constitute our roots and our spiritual identity. Patriotism can appear only where people want to think and act in terms of the common good and some minimum of selflessness. Privatization, corruption, consent to social injustice, contempt for those weaker than ourselves make us incapable of loving the Homeland, unless it is a false love. We are a community of people and we should treat our homeland as God’s gift, and therefore in these difficult situations, which we face now we should kneel and ask God for mercy that we, as Americans and Christians could be a witness to others. Prayer for our earthly homeland is the duty of the Christians. In the present, particularly important moment of the history of our Homeland and Church we must accept - as an obligation - prayer for our homeland, for its present and future shape. We must accept it – and in this way - shared responsibility for what is happening today on American land.
Until Tomorrow
fr. george