5TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B)

**@doi** Sat Feb 07 2009, 09:28

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Jb 7:1-4, 6-7; 1 Cor 9:16-19, 22-23; Mk 1:29-39

In the first reading, Job exclaims: “I am allotted months of futility and
nights of grief and misery. In bed I say, ‘When shall the day break?’
On rising, I think, ‘When shall evening come?’ and I toss restless till
dawn” (Jb 7:3-4).
No one can blame Job for feeling miserable and hopeless. He has just
experienced one tragedy after another. He lost everything he worked for
– his property, his children and later his physical integrity. All
these happened to Job despite the fact that he lived blamelessly in
God’s sight.
Job’s close friends insisted that all his misfortunes were a punishment for a
serious sin he committed. But Job maintained his innocence and kept his
faith in God. “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, naked shall I
return. Yahweh gave, Yahweh has taken away” (Jb 1:21). The foundation
of Job’s faithfulness to God was his belief that all things are in
God’s hands and that everything happens for a reason, even when
sometimes the reason seems so unfair.
Perhaps,
some of us could relate easily with the sentiments of Job. Life can be
very difficult. Sometimes troubles come in bundles – death of a loved
one, drug addicted child, financial problems, failure to get a decent
job, serious illness, dryness in spiritual life and others. All these
together can happen to a person at the same time. When you are in this
situation and you started cursing the day when you were born, as Job
did (Jb 3:3), we cannot blame you. Be free to express your anguish but
try never to lose hope. Like Job, keep believing that God will never
abandon you. As the great Saint Augustine once said:
He
who made you will take care of you. Will He who took care of you before
you came into being not take care of you now, when you are what He
wanted you to be? Because now you are a believer; you are walking on
the way of justice. Will He, then, who causes His sun to rise on the
good and the evil, and His rain to fall on the just and the unjust, not
take care of you? Will He neglect, forsake or desert you who are
already just and live by faith?
It
remains a great Christian challenge to reflect deeply on the mysterious
meaning and place of suffering in the loving plan of God for every
individual. The gospel passage gives us a picture of Jesus’ reaction in
the midst of his suffering people. Jesus, who is the perfect revelation
of God’s love for humanity, does not explain or justify suffering.
Rather, He spends his time and energy healing as many people as He
could from all kinds of illnesses, prays for them and continues to
preach the good news of God’s love to them.
This
coming February 11, the feast of our dearest Lady of Lourdes, the World
Day of the sick will be observed. Let us remember that the sick people
are closest to the heart of Jesus and He cares to identify Himself with
them in their suffering: “I was ill and you visited me” (Mt 25:36).
Visiting and helping sick people is an important ministry of every
disciple of Christ, not only of health professionals. Certainly, sick
people need medical care and scientific competence, but most of all,
they need hope. The element of hope is something that every one of us
can give them.
The
most important thing we can do for the sick is to pray for them. Father
Raniero Cantalamessa, a Capuchin theologian, reminds us that:
Almost
all the sick of the Gospel were cured because some one presented them
to Jesus and pleaded for them. The simplest prayer, which we can all
make our own, is the one that the sisters Martha and Mary addressed to
Jesus, in the circumstance of the sickness of their brother Lazarus:
“Lord, he whom you love is ill” (Jn 11:3).

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