Homily for 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
5th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Feb. 4, 2024
Mark 1: 29-39
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx        
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx

“Rising very early before dawn, he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed” (Mark 1: 35).

On consecutive Sundays we’ve been reading St. Mark’s account of the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry.  He announces his mission to preach the Good News that God’s kingdom is at hand, calls his 1st disciples, and on the Sabbath teaches in the synagog at Capernaum, where his teaching turns into action:  he expels a demon, healing a possessed man.

We’re only on Day 1 of Jesus’ ministry.  After synagog worship, he retires to Simon and Andrew’s home for a meal and relaxation.  But Simon’s mother-in-law is sick.  “He approached, grasped her hand, and helped her up” (1:31).  What’s translated as “helped her up” is literally “raised her.”  The healings of Jesus—driving out demons or curing the sick—are expressions of the power of God, whose purpose is that everyone should enjoy a full and healthy life, ultimately overcoming death by being “raised up” like Jesus himself.

Mark then tells us how, after the Sabbath ends at sunset, “the whole town” comes to be healed, to experience bodily salvation (1:32-34).

Mark doesn’t tell us how this affects Jesus.  There’s a powerful presentation of its effect Season 2 of The Chosen, Episode 3:  how utterly exhausted Jesus is after a long day of listening to and healing countless people.  Even the apostles are worn out just by watching him and managing the crowd.  But Jesus doesn’t collapse into his bedroll without prayer.

Prayer is the linchpin of what Jesus is able to do.  After his long day in the Capernaum synagog and at Simon and Andrew’s home, he gets up before dawn and goes off by himself to pray.  Thruout the Gospels, Jesus prays.

Does this strike you as strange?  Isn’t he God?  Yes, our faith is that Jesus is fully divine, the 2d Person of the Holy Trinity.  But he’s also fully human.  How the divine and the human co-exist in the Person of Jesus is a mystery to us.  As a human being, Jesus is just like us—without sin, because (unlike us) he was completely attuned to his Father in heaven.  But in his earthly life he got tired and exasperated, and he knew fear and temptation.  He was grateful to his Father for the gifts and powers given to him.  He wept for his friend Lazarus and for the city he loved, Jerusalem.  He faced false accusations and harassment.  He suffered pain and, finally, a horrible, unjust death.

How could Jesus the man do that without prayer?  He had to pray for wisdom, courage, strength.  He prayed with gratitude and praised the goodness of God.  He prayed for his followers.

And he taught us to pray.  He gave us the Our Father, the Lord’s Prayer, in which we praise God, submit to God’s will, ask for what we need (including food and forgiveness), commit ourselves to forgiveness, and ask to be delivered from trials we can’t handle by ourselves.

If Jesus needed to pray, don’t you and I?  Every day!  Not at every hour of the day, because we need to focus also on daily life—but implicitly, even daily life is prayer when we offer it to God, as many Christians do every morning with their Morning Offering.  Thruout the day we can make quick mental prayers giving ourselves and our deeds to God, or asking him for the patience we need.  At day’s end, we can ask for mercy for whatever we’ve done badly, and pray for others.  Besides the basic prayers we all use like the Our Father and the Hail Mary, the prayers I say most often are, “Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner,” and “Lord, give me patience and compassion.”  I probably should pray more often for humility, too.

Basically, prayer is conversation with God or with the saints, our intercessors before God.  We can simply open our minds and our hearts about our joys, sorrows, fears, and hopes—as a new day starts, as the day unfolds, and as the day closes.  When I was a high school principal 40 years ago, the school secretary had on our office wall a sign that said, “Lord, there’s nothing today that you and I can’t handle together.”  Our Father loves us, wants to hear from us, wants to help us with our struggles, wants to bless us.