On the Margins from Mater Dei Radio, Portland, OR

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Sunday February 4, 2018

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Gospel MK 1:29-39

Dear Followers of the Healing Christ,

Today’s gospel is one of my favorites, Mark 1:25-39. Jesus is brought to the house of Simon’s mother-in-law where she lay sick. Jesus reached out, “grasped her hand,” and helped her up. I can’t image how she felt as her hand rested in his. She may have thought that healing would never come to her. She may have dreamed that her life was over because of her illness. Hope came to her on her sickbed.

Imagine feeling the hand of Jesus reaching out toward your weakness. Hold on to the beauty of your imagination in this gospel to find your hand in the grasp of Jesus who wants you to live and thrive. One important thing to consider is the way you need to be lifted up. Perhaps your bitterness is weighing you down. Perhaps the grief you carry for the death of a spouse or child creates only darkness for you. Loneliness, the threat of a job loss, or the silence you hear within your family, are all places where Jesus needs to enter your life.

Even in this first chapter of Mark’s gospel we hear this reference to his own resurrection. This action of being ill or separated from others, then being cured and physically helped up, is in many ways the real rhythm of change, of dying to self and being restored to new life. This is our mission in the Church to be lifted up from our sin, failure and doubt so to live for others.

Jesus very clearly helps us restore relationships in his mission on earth. The disciples bring to him the ill and marginalized of the village. Mark’s clarity of Jesus’ mission is for us to take seriously as well. Jesus desires wholeness for people. This is the reason he was born into our world in the first place. His ministry is about people. The redemption happens among the fragile because the weary and poor so often teach all of us how to need God and how to live with great humility.

Jesus longs to grasp our hands and to help us up. He wants us to be on our feet and to help others as he does with Simon’s mother-in-law in the gospel. He wants us to live with hope and healing in our world. Jesus wants the best for us. This is the result of being in relationship with Christ Jesus. This is the beginning of eternal life. This is love now that will become love later. This is peace now that will be peace for all eternity. Jesus’ love in this healing story is the same love that will grasp our hearts here on earth and even for all eternity.

Here are some things to consider this week:

What is the message you desire to hear from Jesus at this time in your life?

What areas of your life need to be lifted up with his help and brought to freedom and hope?

Where is Jesus calling you to serve with such new life and integrity?

Blessings,

Fr. Ron

“What if I stretch out my arm and my fingertips

could feel the cloth that covers your body

and in my unworthiness

your

healing

found a home

in the fabric of my sinful past

and now willing heart

and hope

could bind me to you

and I could find shelter

in the swaddling garments of your love

and I could discover

my heart

dazzling white with newness

and what if I learn that I am clothed in such mercy

that I realize how to reach out to the naked and vulnerable

to dress them with justice and forgiveness

and house them in hope

because your healing

extends through every thread of my life

as I learn to wear your garment

that was tossed to the side in your empty tomb

that I now wear since I was washed in your waters of dying and rising

and you toweled me clean and wrapped me warm

and your garments will even cover my casket after my last breath

and I shall be at home in you

fully clad in tenderness and peace?”

Painting by: Ronald Raab, CSC

“What if all that was unclean in me cried out to you for healing and all the sense of being incomplete or lost was all an illusion and you called me into a deeper relationship with you and I fell under your healing touch and landed on my knees in prayer and a blanket of awe wrapped me up in your presence and other people came to believe in you because I become another person in whose body rests your presence and healing voice and tender heart and then you call me into being what the healing is for not only me but our world torn apart in the illusion that evil wins and that we all must stand alone to find love quite apart from your presence or touch or voice and what if you stood on all of the calamity of the earth and how we have created chasms rather than community and harshness rather than healing and more earthly evil instead of heavenly love and what if you touched me and I touched you and even my spirit was healed and love flowed from us both?”

Painting by: Ronald Raab, CSC

Dear Believers in the Hope of Christ Jesus,

In today’s gospel, Mark 1:21-28, Jesus reaches out to rebuke an unclean spirit. The unclean spirit cries out because he knows who Jesus is, “I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” This moment in the beginning of Mark’s gospel is important for us to consider for our own lives.

The three-year ministry of Jesus begins with establishing his authority on earth. Jesus reaches out to the sick, the suffering and to heal those possessed by unclean spirits. People are experiencing the healing, comfort and liberation of Jesus’ presence. The Kingdom of Heaven is being manifest on earth in the restoration of relationships; the healing of the body and the hope that God will prevail against all evil.

In these beginning weeks of Ordinary Time, our worship centers on Jesus’ reaching out to us and teaching us about His mission on earth. Not only does He help us heal, but teaches us to reach out to heal others. Not only does He show us the reality of His love, but helps us encounter love in the world. Not only does He help us resist unclean spirits of hopelessness, gossip, backstabbing, and despair, but helps us encounter God’s Kingdom in all of our earthly encounters and relationships.

Through our own baptism, we become a new fire on earth. We spread His ability to heal and forgive within our own commitments. We become what we see in Jesus. We live as He lived and forgive as He forgave and heal as He healed.

We focus on Jesus’ love and His passion, death and resurrection. His life overcomes all evil. Sometimes we forget our faith. We tend to focus on darkness instead. We seem convinced by our world that evil is here to stay. However, if we focus on the love Jesus has for us, His everlasting goodness and forgiveness, we then live in a light that is sheer beauty and we bask in the hope that prevails for all eternity.

I invite you into prayer and reflection on this gospel today. As you face your own relationships and live your own life, what are the obstacles or moments of darkness that you wish Jesus to touch and heal?

Also, how do you experience the true authority of Jesus in your prayer and in your daily life? How can you become hope for others through your actions and accountability to Christ Jesus?

I think one of the most important aspects of this gospel is to stand in awe at the miraculous presence of Jesus Christ as the people around Jesus did in the text. This is an aspect of faith that we all need to ponder and reflect upon. Awe. How can we invite Jesus into our lives and be surprised by His mighty works and deeds?

Awe and wonder become an important aspect of faith for any follower of Jesus. My prayer for you is that you may surrender to the love God has for you and know through the miracles of healing and hope that faith is really real in our world today.

Blessings to you and your loved ones,

Fr. Ron

On the Margins from Mater Dei Radio, Portland, OR

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sunday January 27, 2018

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Gospel MK 1:21-28

Dear Followers of Jesus,

I am always amazed how Jesus shows up in our lives. He always wants something. In today’s gospel, Mark 1:14-20, Jesus calls disciples who are casting their nets into the sea. These men are doing what they know best, making a living for their families using their talents and gifts. Jesus invites them to consider something else.

“Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” I can’t imagine how these ordinary men first heard this. The story is very direct with little nuance. The men hear him and simply follow him. I wish our faith and leadership was so clear and direct. At least in my life and I suspect in yours, it is not so easy to drop everything and follow Jesus.

These gospels from Mark in the first weeks of Ordinary Time invite us to reflect on the initial “authority” of Jesus. From his baptism, Jesus begins his public ministry with great personal authority that others understood as coming from the Father. This profound personal authority in his speech and actions flows down to our generation as well.

In these past weeks, we have cultivated a new desire for God in Advent. We have seen the miracles of the Incarnation in the Christmas season and now we begin a ministry with Jesus that uses our gifts, talents and energy for the good. Jesus is casting a net into our hearts and waiting for us to follow with clarity, longing and hope.

I invite you to sit with Jesus in prayer this week with a view of allowing him to ask you something new. What is Jesus asking of you to change, develop or offer to other people? How can you receive the net Jesus casts out to the world? What will Jesus catch with you? Apathy or good will? Attention to him or neglect and self-sufficiency?

The disciples change within an instant. Would you do such a thing… as change? What would your response be to Jesus’ call to follow?

These gospels form us in our discipleship. We need to turn to the disciples that Jesus first called in order to find our way into the heart of Christ. In our parish community, I witness daily how all of you are willing to lay down your net and start something new. The ways you enter into a nursing home and provide Eucharist and your presence among the sick. The ways you are changed and challenged by your children. You serve people beyond your expertise. You welcome the stranger as your brothers and sisters.

Sometimes Jesus invites the people we least expect. Perhaps that is your heart. We are all open to the God of surprises. You might also reflect upon how you are being called into serving in ways you have least expected. There is always growth, insight and perhaps even laughter connecting to how Jesus invites us, who seem the least among his followers.

During this time, I ask that you pray for the completion of Sacred Heart Church.

Blessings to you,

Fr. Ron

On the Margins from Mater Dei Radio, Portland, OR

Third Sunday in Ordinary, January 21, 2018

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Gospel MK 1:14-20

Mark 3:7-12

He told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, 
so that they would not crush him. He had cured many and, as a result, those who had diseases were pressing upon him to touch him.

 What if I could touch you and be swept up in the crowd and we all finally realize our need for you to touch us in our aches and anxieties, in our poverties and perversions, in our sins and subtle ways of denial and we finally admit that our barefoot race with the wrong crowd we were chasing strength and surety, self-reliance and separateness and what if I could touch you along with this crowd who are weary and do not know where else to turn and I finally find myself among people who know the direction to experience heartfelt healing and genuine love and authentic community and that I get so close as to smell your hand wave over us with the scent of pure grace and I grasp your arm as you pull away to feel your pulse and believe that I am like you wanting more and more to belong among those with deep faith and what if I could touch you and you could touch me and I could find in my search and in my running that it is all worth the sweat to follow the crowd whose instincts are to press against you with a crush of love and discover that we can see your breath over us and know that you are speaking tender blessings of healing through the misty air before you get into the boat?

The quote on the cover this week is from parishioner Anna Keating, inviting us to see art and beauty as we prepare for the restoration of the church. The visual art is from Ronald Raab, CSC

Dear Searchers for Christ,

In Today’s gospel, John once again points into the direction of Jesus with words that we still use within the Eucharist today, “Behold, the Lamb of God.” These ancient words help us today in our search for Jesus.

At every Mass, just before receiving the Real Presence of Christ, I point into the direction the Body and Blood of Jesus. My voice proclaims these words of John, the Forerunner. At that moment in the Mass we recognize what we will receive and what we will become.

I wonder if we are paying attention? Can we really see the Lamb of God in our midst today? This invitation helps us come to terms with what Eucharist is in the first place. We are all hungry for Christ and the mercy, compassion and tenderness He brings. For many of us, we have not yet established a relationship with Christ Jesus. The Eucharist is just a commodity. We show up and get communion and we have fulfilled our obligation. What else is there? We tend to think that will get us beyond our earthly grave.

As we enter into the mystery of this new liturgical year, I invite you to be ready to respond to John’s assertion that the Lord is near. In Advent, we tried to stretch our desire for God, to cultivate in a new way a deep longing for the Divine. We must continue such a search and not give up on that longing.

At Sacred Heart, we are preparing for a restored house of prayer. We wait to find the Real Presence on a new altar. I wonder if we can imagine our lives differently as we wait for the church building? I invite you to point with your entire lives into the mystery of Christ Jesus.

The reason why we pray for people in need is that we know we must rely on the power of Christ to remedy human longing. So we pray for our children who have yet to find the mystery of Jesus. We pray for people locked up in doubt or those behind bars because they have yet to find the freedom of Christ. We pray for our immigrants, our lost, our neighbors who have lost their homes in fires, because we are all looking for the safety of home and the stability of good relationships.

Here are some questions for you to consider this week as you ponder the finger pointing of John and look into a new direction for Christ:

How is the Holy Spirit inviting you to search for Jesus?

How can you enter into the suffering of others and point to Christ?

How do you experience the Eucharist as a revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ?

How might you pray with the words of Jesus this week, “Come, and you will see…?”

Blessings,

Fr. Ron