The readings for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B) May be found at:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/020721.cfm
In today’s gospel, we get a sort of instruction manual on how to live the Christian life.
If we recall last weekend, St. Mark told us that when Jesus entered the synagogue and taught, a man with an unclean spirit cried out.
We all remember what happened next, Jesus drove out the evil spirit, amazing everyone in the process.
Fast forward to this week, after leaving the synagogue, Jesus goes to Simon’s house to heal his sick mother in law who then waits on them.
Now, the morale of today’s story is not that if you help your mother in law, she will do stuff for you - that’s not the point.
But if you think about it, Jesus went to the synagogue - he healed there before going home and healing some more.
There’s a lesson there for us. To take God home from Church.
That’s exactly what we’re called to do.
Here we are in church, being nourished by the Word of God.
In a few minutes, we’ll be fed by Jesus himself, by His most precious body and blood in the Blessed Sacrament, the Holy Eucharist.
But we can’t just let it end there.
We’re called to take that nourishment out of this Church and to do something with it. Do we do that?
Once we leave this building, would anyone know based on how we act and what we do, that we had been here at all?
Or do we blow it before we get out of the parking lot?
So we need to take God home from Church.
Now, Jesus didn’t stop at healing Simon’s mother in law, he helped many in the community - curing all the sick.
Having been nourished by the Word and the Eucharist, we’re called to carry Christ into our daily lives and help others.
Sound simple enough.
But this is where we make things hard - is Church something we do for forty-five minutes, once a week?
Is it a selfish thing we do and keep to ourselves?
Or do we bring our faith to others and, in a way, heal as Jesus did?
Next, St, Mark tells us that Jesus went off to a quiet place and took time to pray.
Christ spent time with the Father to refresh himself, to listen to the will of God.
Christ needed it and so do we all, I think.
Every day we need a quiet place to pray, to listen to what God wants to tell us.
And given how busy our lives are, it probably makes sense to schedule a time for prayer each day so that it actually gets done.
Christ took the time.
We need to do that too.
We need to set up a prayer routine, to schedule prayer time each day.
After Jesus finished praying, he reached out. He said, “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also.”
We need to do the same thing. To take our faith to others.
And we don’t need to go door to door handing out pamphlets or to spin a big sign to do that.
We proclaim Christ to our neighbors when we pray with them or near them.
When we pray before meals, especially, when at restaurants, when we make the sign of the cross driving by a church, when we say “Thank you Jesus” for a blessing big or small, we publicly proclaim our faith.
What Jesus did, we’re called to do.
After going to church and being fed, we are to live our faith.
To bring God into our daily lives.
To pray, to stay refreshed and to listen to the Father.
Then, refreshed by prayer, to live our faith; to proclaim the good news to those around us.
It’s like a set of instructions that if we do them feed on themselves, like a big flywheel that helps us to live as Christians.
And for extra credit - don’t forget to take care of your mother in law.
