18th January >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Reflections on Mark 3:7-12 for Thursday, Second Week in Ordinary Time: ‘Great numbers who had heard of all he was doing came to him’. (2024)

18th January >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Reflections on Mark 3:7-12 for Thursday, Second Week in Ordinary Time:‘Great numbers who had heard of all he was doing came to him’.

Thursday, Second Week in Ordinary Time

Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

Mark 3:7-12

Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lakeside, and great crowds from Galilee followed him. From Judaea, Jerusalem, Idumaea, Transjordania and the region of Tyre and Sidon, great numbers who had heard of all he was doing came to him. And he asked his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, to keep him from being crushed. For he had cured so many that all who were afflicted in any way were crowding forward to touch him. And the unclean spirits, whenever they saw him, would fall down before him and shout, ‘You are the Son of God!’ But he warned them strongly not to make him known.

Gospel (USA)

Mark 3:7-12

The unclean spirits shouted, “You are the Son of God,” but Jesus warned them sternly not to make him known.

Jesus withdrew toward the sea with his disciples. A large number of people followed from Galilee and from Judea. Hearing what he was doing, a large number of people came to him also from Jerusalem, from Idumea, from beyond the Jordan, and from the neighborhood of Tyre and Sidon. 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. And whenever unclean spirits saw him they would fall down before him and shout, “You are the Son of God.” He warned them sternly not to make him known.

Reflections (9)

(i) Thursday, Second Week in Ordinary Time

According to today’s gospel reading, ‘all who were afflicted in any way were crowding forward to touch’ Jesus. People wanted to get as close as possible to Jesus because they recognized God’s life-giving power at work in his ministry. They recognized Jesus as the Life-Giver, as one who could heal their brokenness. In the first reading, Saul, the first king of Israel, takes on the opposite role to that of Jesus. Far from being a life-giver, he shows himself to be a death-dealer. He grew jealous of the young David’s success on the battlefield, especially when people began to compare David’s successes favourable to Saul’s. The jealousy of Saul fuelled his anger, and his anger led him to resolve to kill David. It took Jonathan, Saul’s son, to restrain Saul’s murderous intent. We are told that Jonathan held David in great affection. Jonathan’s affection for David was a truly life-giving power. Because of Jonathan’s affection, David was preserved from Saul’s murderous intent. In this way, Jonathan showed that he possessed something of the life-giving quality of Jesus. There are many Sauls in our world who are driven by jealousy and anger to bring death to others. There are also Jesus figures to be found, like Jonathan, who bring life to those who are threatened by death. We are all called to share in Jesus’ life-giving ministry. As in the case of Jonathan, that will often mean having the courage to stand up to the forces of death.

And/Or

(ii) Thursday, Second Week in Ordinary Time

In the beginning of today’s gospel reading Jesus withdraws with his disciples to the Sea of Galilee. He had just experienced hostility from the religious leaders. In fact, Mark had just told us that, because Jesus had healed a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath in the synagogue, the Pharisees conspired with the Herodians against him, with a view to destroying him. He withdraws from that hostility with his disciples to the Sea of Galilee. Jesus also encounters a response which is the complete opposite to the hostility he experienced from some. People approached him from a huge area, trying to touch him so as to be healed of their brokenness and diseases. The contrast between the two responses to Jesus is very striking. Some wanted to break him; others looked to him to heal them of their brokenness. Those who had no sense of their own poverty despised him; those who were aware of their poverty flocked to him. Every human being Jesus met was poor and broken to some degree; yet, it was only those who recognized their own poverty and brokenness who responded to Jesus. The gospel reading suggests that it is above all the sense of our own need, the awareness of our own poverty, that opens us up to the Lord’s presence to us.

And/Or

(iii) Thursday, Second Week in Ordinary Time

The gospel reading this morning gives us a picture of great crowds of people coming to Jesus. In particular, all who were afflicted in any way came forward to touch him. It was the people who were suffering, who were distressed, who had least going for them, that came to Jesus in the biggest numbers. They sensed that he had come to heal their brokenness, that he had come in a special way for the suffering, the broken, the lost. We too come to the Lord with the greatest urgency when we are struggling, when we are in some kind of distress. Like the crowds in the gospel reading, we reach out to touch the Lord in our brokenness, recognizing him as the source of healing and life. The Lord is as available to us as he was to the crowds of Galilee; he remains strength in our weakness, healing in our brokenness, life in our various experiences of death. We can approach him with the same confidence of being well received as the people in today’s gospel reading.

And/Or

(iv) Thursday, Second Week in Ordinary Time

Mediators can be very important people, especially in times of dispute. The mediator can bring together conflicting parties who would never otherwise come together. This is the role that we find Jonathan playing in this morning’s first reading. Saul is in conflict with David, although David has no conflict with Saul. David’s popularity made Saul jealous of David; he turned away from David, even though David did not turn away from Saul. Jonathan’s intervention on behalf of David succeeded in reconciling Saul to David, for the time being at least. In the New Testament Jesus is spoken of as a mediator on a couple of occasions. He is the mediator between God and ourselves. Even though God never turns away from us, we turn away from God every so often. Jesus is our way back to God. He came from God to draw us back to God. He draws us back to God by drawing us to himself, just as in the gospel reading, he is portrayed as drawing many people to himself, to such an extent that he was in danger of being crushed. We pray at this Mass that we would allow Jesus to draw us towards himself and, thereby, towards God.

And/Or

(v) Thursday, Second Week in Ordinary Time

This morning’s first reading is the beginning of the tragic story of Saul’s jealousy of the younger David. In his anger Saul saw David as his enemy, whereas in reality David was his courageous supporter. Jonathan, son of Saul and the great friend of David, helped his father to see David in a clearer light, at least for the moment. He helped his father, Saul, to see a side to David that he was completely ignoring. In the words of Jonathan to his father, ‘David has not sinned against you, and what he has done has been greatly to your advantage’. Saul was helped to see David through the eyes of Jonathan, rather than just through his own angry and jealous eyes. We all need a Jonathan in our lives from time to time, someone who can help us to see some person or situation in a clearer way. Our way of seeing can be very limiting; our emotions can sometimes make us focus on one aspect of a person or a situation to the exclusion of all other aspects. So often we need the perspective of another or of several others. The Lord enlightens us through the experience and the insight of others. We need to keep recognizing the limits of our perspective and to be open to what the Lord may be trying to show us through those who are part of our lives or those whom he sends to us in life.

And/Or

(vi) Thursday, Second Week in Ordinary Time

In the verse immediately preceding the gospel passage we have just read, Mark says that ‘the Pharisees went out and at once began to plot with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him’. That very ominous verse is immediately followed by the passage we have just heard which states that great numbers from a huge area were coming to him because they heard of all that he was doing. In particular, all who were afflicted in any way were crowding forward to touch him. Whereas some of the religious and political leaders, the Pharisees and the Herodians, were plotting to destroy Jesus, those who were afflicted in any way came to him in their droves. Whereas the former wanted to lay hands on him to kill him, the latter wanted to touch him so as to be made well. It is striking how Jesus’ words and deeds could meet with such strikingly different responses. Those who had power were threatened by him; those who had little or nothing were drawn to him. Perhaps the gospel reading this morning is saying to us that we need to come before the Lord in our poverty. It is not such much our knowledge or our influence that creates an opening for us to approach the Lord; it is much more our brokenness, our poverty, our affliction.

And/Or

(vii) Thursday, Second Week in Ordinary Time

Today’s gospel reading gives us a picture of Jesus with people coming to him, not just from Judea and Galilee, but from much further afield, from Idumea, Transjordania, Tyre and Sidon. This great and diverse crowd had one thing in common; they were all afflicted in some way. The gospel reading says, ‘all who were afflicted in any way were crowding forward to touch him’. A little earlier in Mark’s gospel Jesus had spoken of himself as the doctor who came not for the healthy but for the sick, for those broken in body, mind or spirit. We all need to go to the doctor from time to time, some less often than others. However, we all need to go to the Lord in our brokenness all of the time. We all belong in that great throng of humanity that made their way to Jesus in the gospel reading, even though we do not always recognize ourselves as belonging to that great crowd. We all need the Lord, because what we receive from him cannot be received from any merely natural source. That is why he calls on us to seek him, to ask of him, to knock on his door, or in the image of today’s gospel reading, to touch him. We keep reaching out to touch him in our brokenness because we have a need deep within us that only he can satisfy. One of the privileged ways we touch the Lord is in the Eucharist, which has been aptly described as broken bread for a broken people.

And/Or

(viii) Thursday, Second Week in Ordinary Time

This morning’s first reading paints a very vivid picture of the destructive power of jealously. Saul, the king of Israel, grew jealous of David’s popularity and military success. Even though David wanted to serve Saul, Saul saw David as a competitor and a threat and wanted to kill David. Jealousy clouded Saul’s judgement and made him see David in a way that wasn’t true to the kind of person David was. It was Jonathan, Saul’s son and David’s friend, who helped Saul to see David differently. On this occasion at least Saul was receptive to Jonathan’s more insightful judgement of David. Jonathan helped his father to see more clearly; he helped to heal him of his blindness. The gospel reading presents people coming to Jesus in huge numbers for healing. We are all in need of healing of some kind. We can suffer from a certain kind of blindness, like Saul. We see others not as they are but as we imagine them to be.The strong emotions we feel towards them can distort our perception of them. We often need a Jonathan to help us see more clearly. Sometimes we may be called to be a Jonathan for others, by helping them to see someone with less prejudiced eyes. The Lord needs each of us to be channels of his healing work. He wants to work through each of us to open the eyes of the blind. He needs us to be a Jonathan for each other.

And/Or

(ix) Thursday, Second Week in Ordinary Time

In this morning’s gospel reading, Mark gives us a very vivid picture of the popularity of Jesus during the early stages of his Galilean ministry. Great crowds from a very large area came to him, from as far north as Tyre and Sidon in modern day Lebanon, and as far east as Transjordania, modern day Jordan. They came to him in their need. In the words of the gospel reading, they were ‘afflicted’, and they recognized in Jesus one who could heal their affliction. It is often the way that we seek out the Lord with greatest passion and energy when we or someone we love is afflicted. Our vulnerability, whether it is physical, emotional or mental, opens us up to the Lord’s presence. When all is well with us, we can go along without too much reference to the Lord. Our relationship with the Lord can deepen in times of personal crisis. It is not that our need of the Lord is any greater at such times, it is just that we become more aware of our need of the Lord when the sense of our own self-sufficiency is undermined. Those experiences of brokenness, which we might lament because of the pain they cause us, can be surprising moments of grace. Saint Paul made this discovery for himself. He came to recognize that what he termed the ‘thorn in the flesh’ he so desperately wanted to be rid of created an opening for the Lord to work powerfully in and through him, as he heard the Lord say to him, ‘my power is made perfect in weakness’.

Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland.

Parish Website: www.stjohnsclontarf.ie Please join us via our webcam.

Twitter: @SJtBClontarfRC.

Facebook: St John the Baptist RC Parish, Clontarf.

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18th January >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Reflections on Mark 3:7-12 for Thursday, Second Week in Ordinary Time: ‘Great numbers who had heard of all he was doing came to him’. (2024)

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