On leaving the synagogue Jesus entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John. Simon's mother-in-law lay sick with a fever. They immediately told him about her. He approached, grasped her hand, and helped her up. Then the fever left her and she waited on them. When it was evening, after sunset, they brought to him all who were ill or possessed by demons. The whole town was gathered at the door. He cured many who were sick with various diseases, and he drove out many demons, not permitting them to speak because they knew him. Rising very early before dawn, he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed. Simon and those who were with him pursued him and on finding him said, "Everyone is looking for you." He told them, "Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come." So he went into their synagogues, preaching and driving out demons throughout the whole of Galilee.

Reflection

Some years ago a TV station showed the soap opera Life Can Be Beautiful. Yes, it can be but not in the soap opera sense. We would have to be hermits to avoid seeing the pain and the misery in the world. When I hear somebody sigh, "Life is hard", I am always tempted to ask, "Compared to what?" We see marriages heading for rocks, neighbours having nervous breakdowns, teenagers at odds with their parents, crime, violence and destruction in the cities. Each of us personally experiences suffering, illness and death. It is a funny old world; you are lucky if you get out of it alive. Hence we sympathise with Job when he cries out, "Is not man's life on earth a drudgery?" (Job 7: 1) Because of so much evil in the world, many deny the very existence of God. At the end of the Second World War, Rabbi Rubenstein, confronted with the realisation that 6,000,000 of his fellow Jews - God's chosen people - had been exterminated as useless parasites by Hitler, came to the conclusion that there is no God.

But to blame God for all the ills in the world is not the answer. The first place to look is within every human being: one's inhumanity to another. Wars are started by human beings, food shortages are deliberately caused to keep the world prices up, and millions are abused, exploited and manipulated by their own fellow human beings. But the question remains: Why God permits evil? We would be lucky if we knew the answer. Why Jesus himself had to endure a horrifying death is a mystery. God is no Shylock demanding his last pound of flesh. Perhaps God allows suffering as a purifying fire, to remind us that a human being is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave, and that under all skies, all weather, our happiness lies elsewhere and not here. But whatever the reason, human life is a meaningless absurdity without God and hence suffering is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.

We must live through the mystery of suffering not like Job who became so profoundly pessimistic that life seemed to him as a hereditary disease, divided into the horrible and the miserable. For such pessimists, things are always going to get a lot worse before they get worse. But we must live through the mystery of suffering like St Paul who voluntarily made himself a slave for a deeper hope and a higher motive, namely, "for the sake of the Gospel in the hope of having a share in its blessings" (1 Cor 9:23). Yes, God does not offer us a bed of roses, but he will lead us through pains to full life in Christ. Hence, adversity is like a toad, ugly and venomous, but it wears a precious jewel in its head. God will move in a mysterious way to perform his wonders. The clouds that we dread so much are big with mercies and will break in blessings on our heads.

That is our hope. If we do not hope, we will not find what is beyond our hopes. Hence putting on the armour of hope let us each get actively involved in alleviating some of the sufferings of others, as Jesus did. Instead of battling with the question, "Why suffering?" Jesus moved to heal the afflicted. "After sunset, as evening drew on, they brought him all who were ill, whom he cured" (Mk 1:32-33). All that is necessary for the victory of evil is that good men do nothing when others suffer. Hence let us reach out and touch the worried, the weak, the suffering; and let us witness to the truth that God still loves all men in their weakness and fragility. We Christians, blessed with this hope, are not storerooms but channels; we are not cisterns but springs.

from HIS WORD LIVES
by VIMA DASAN,S.J
Paulines Publication

NOTICE: Please be informed that Sunday Gospel Reflections provided by this site will be discontinued starting May 1, 2012. For this will be replaced by YOUTUBE HOMILIES - AN BINHI HOMILIES (See Home Page). Thank you for reading. - Paulines.ph