Raised to Serve
In today’s First Reading, Job describes the futility of life before Christ. His lament reminds us of the curse of toil and death placed upon Adam following his original sin (see Genesis 3:17-19).
Men and women are like slaves seeking shade, unable to find rest. Their lives are like the wind that comes and goes.
But, as we sing in today’s Psalm, He who created the stars, promised to heal the brokenhearted and gather those lost in exile from Him (see Isaiah 11:12; 61:1). We see this promise fulfilled in today’s Gospel.
Simon’s mother-in-law is like Job’s toiling, hopeless humanity. She is laid low by affliction but too weak to save herself.
But as God promised to take His chosen people by the hand (see Isaiah 42:6), Jesus grasps her by the hand and helps her up. The word translated “help” is actually Greek for raising up. The same verb is used when Jesus commands a dead girl to arise (see Mark 5:41-42). It’s used again to describe His own resurrection (see Mark 14:28; 16:7).
What Jesus has done for Simon’s mother-in-law, He has done for all humanity—raised all of us who lay dead through our sins (see Ephesians 2:5).
Notice all the words of totality and completeness in the Gospel. The whole town gathers; all the sick are brought to Him.
He drives out demons in the whole of Galilee. Everyone is looking for Christ.
We too have found Him. By our baptism, He healed and raised us to live in His presence (see Hosea 6:1-2).
Like Simon’s mother-in-law, there is only one way we can thank Him for the new life He has given us. We must rise to serve Him and His gospel.
Our lives must be our thanksgiving, as Paul describes in today’s Epistle. We must tell everyone the good news, the purpose for which Jesus has come—that others, too, may have a share in this salvation.
Saint Jerome (347-420)
Commentary on Saint Mark’s Gospel
“Jesus approached her, grasped her hand and helped her up.” For indeed, the sick woman was unable to get up on her own. Since she was confined to bed, she could not come before Jesus. This compassionate doctor came to her bed himself and he who carried a sick lamb on his shoulders now drew near to this bed… He draws closer that he might heal more fully. Take good note of what is written here…
“You should certainly have come to meet me, you should have come to greet me at the threshold of your house, but in that case your healing would have been the result, less of my compassion than of your will. But since such a strong fever oppresses you and prevents you from getting up, I am coming myself.”
“And he helped her up.” As she couldn’t stand up by herself, it was the Lord who helped her. “He grasped her hand and helped her up.” When Peter was in danger on the sea, just as he was going to drown, he too was grasped by the hand and raised up…
What a beautiful sign of friendship and love towards this sick woman! He helped her up by taking her hand; his hand healed the sick woman’s hand. He grasped that hand as a doctor would have done, he who was both doctor and remedy took her pulse and assessed the gravity of the fever. Jesus touched it and the fever vanished.
Let us want him to touch our hand so that in this way what we do may be made pure. Should he enter our house, let us get off our bed at last and not remain lying down. Jesus stands at our bedside and will we remain lying down? Come on! To your feet!… “There is one among you whom you do not recognize” (Jn 1,26); “the kingdom of God is among you” (Lk 17,21). Let us have faith and we shall see Jesus among us.
John Tauler
Sermon 15, for the Vigil of Palm Sunday
When the Son of God “raised his eyes to heaven and said: ‘Father, glorify your Son'” (Jn 17,1), he taught us by this action that we should raise on high all our senses, our hands, our faculties and our soul and pray in him, with him and through him.
This was the most loving and holy deed the Son of God could have done here below: to worship his beloved Father. However, this far surpasses any intellectual reasoning and we cannot in any way reach and understand it except in the Holy Spirit. Saint Augustine and Saint Anselm tell us concerning prayer that it is “a raising of the soul to God”…
For my part, I tell you only this: truly detach yourself from yourself and from all created things and raise your soul wholly to God above all creatures, into the deep abyss. There, immerse your spirit in God’s spirit in true abandonment…, in a real union with God…, Ask God there for everything he wants us to ask him, what you desire and what other people desire from you.
And hold this as certain: what a tiny, little coin is with regard to a hundred thousand gold pieces, that is what all external prayer is with regard to this prayer, which is a real union with God, and with regard to this inflowing and fusion of the created spirit in the uncreated spirit of God…
If someone asks you for a prayer, it is a good thing to do so in an external way as you were asked and as you promised to do. But, as you do so, draw your soul to the heights and into this interior desert drive your whole flock as Moses did (Ex 3,1)…
“True worshippers worship the Father in spirit and in truth” (Jn 4,23). In this interior prayer every practice, every formula, and all those kinds of prayer that, from Adam until now, have been offered and will yet be offered until the last day, are fulfilled. All of them are brought to perfection in a moment in this true and essential recollection.
Pope Benedict XVI
Homily, February 5, 2006
The Gospel we have just listened to begins with a very nice, beautiful episode but is also full of meaning. The Lord went to the house of Simon Peter and Andrew and found Peter’s mother-in-law sick with a fever. He took her by the hand and raised her, the fever left her, and she served them.
Jesus’ entire mission is symbolically portrayed in this episode. Jesus, coming from the Father, visited peoples’ homes on our earth and found a humanity that was sick, sick with fever, the fever of ideologies, idolatry, forgetfulness of God. The Lord gives us his hand, lifts us up and heals us.
And he does so in all ages; he takes us by the hand with his Word, thereby dispelling the fog of ideologies and forms of idolatry. He takes us by the hand in the sacraments, he heals us from the fever of our passions and sins through absolution in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. He gives us the possibility to raise ourselves, to stand before God and before men and women. And precisely with this content of the Sunday liturgy, the Lord comes to meet us, he takes us by the hand, raises us and heals us ever anew with the gift of his words, the gift of himself.
But the second part of this episode is also important. This woman who has just been healed, the Gospel says, begins to serve them. She sets to work immediately to be available to others, and thus becomes a representative of so many good women, mothers, grandmothers, women in various professions, who are available, who get up and serve and are the soul of the family, the soul of the parish. …
Jesus slept at Peter’s house, but he rose before dawn while it was still dark and went out to find a deserted place to pray. And here the true centre of the mystery of Jesus appears.
Jesus was conversing with the Father and raised his human spirit in communion with the Person of the Son, so that the humanity of the Son, united to him, might speak in the Trinitarian dialogue with the Father; and thus, he also made true prayer possible for us. In the liturgy Jesus prays with us, we pray with Jesus, and so we enter into real contact with God, we enter into the mystery of eternal love of the Most Holy Trinity.
Jesus speaks to the Father: this is the source and centre of all Jesus’ activities; we see his preaching, his cures, his miracles and lastly the Passion, and they spring from this centre of his being with the Father.
And in this way this Gospel teaches us that the centre of our faith and our lives is indeed the primacy of God. Whenever God is not there, the human being is no longer respected either. Only if God’s splendour shines on the human face, is the human image of God protected by a dignity which subsequently no one must violate.
The primacy of God. Let us see how the first three requests in the “Our Father” refer precisely to this primacy of God: that God’s Name be sanctified, that respect for the divine mystery be alive and enliven the whole of our lives; that “may God’s Kingdom come” and “may [his] will be done” are two sides of the same coin; where God’s will is done Heaven already exists, a little bit of Heaven also begins on earth, and where God’s will is done the Kingdom of God is present.
Since the Kingdom of God is not a series of things, the Kingdom of God is the presence of God, the person’s union with God. It is to this destination that Jesus wants to guide us.
The centre of his proclamation is the Kingdom of God, that is, God as the source and centre of our lives, and he tells us: God alone is the redemption of man. …
The continuation of the Gospel itself powerfully confirms this. The Apostles said to Jesus: come back, everyone is looking for you. And he said no, I must go on to the next towns that I may proclaim God and cast out demons, the forces of evil; for that is why I came.
Jesus came – the Greek text says, “I came out from the Father” – not to bring us the comforts of life but to bring the fundamental condition of our dignity, to bring us the proclamation of God, the presence of God, and thus to overcome the forces of evil. He indicated this priority with great clarity: I did not come to heal – I also do this, but as a sign -, I came to reconcile you with God. God is our Creator, God has given us life, our dignity: and it is above all to him that we must turn.
Saint Bernard
Sermon 1 for Advent, 7-8
“Jesus grasped her hand and helped her up”
How greatly God, who seeks us, condescends, and what great dignity is given to the human being thus sought!… “What is man, that you make much of him, or pay him any heed?” (Job 7:17) I would really like to know why God wanted to come to us himself and why it wasn’t rather we who went to him. For our interest is at stake. The rich are not in the habit of going to the poor, even when they intend to do them good. It would have been proper for us to go to Jesus. But a double obstacle was preventing us from doing so: our eyes were blind and he dwells in inaccessible light; we were lying paralyzed on our pallet, unable to reach God’s greatness. That is why our good Savior and doctor of our souls came down from his height and tempered the brilliance of his glory for our sick eyes. He clothed himself as if with a lantern; I mean with the luminous body he took to himself and that was pure of all blemish.
Pope Benedict XVI
Angelus Address Sunday, February 8, 2009
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Gospel today (cf. Mk 1: 29-39) in close continuity with last Sunday’s presents to us Jesus who, after preaching on the Sabbath in the synagogue of Capernaum, heals many sick people, beginning with Simon’s mother-in-law. Upon entering Simon’s house, he finds her lying in bed with a fever and, by taking her hand, immediately heals her and has her get up. After sunset, he heals a multitude of people afflicted with ailments of every kind. The experience of healing the sick occupied a large part of Christ’s public mission and invites us once again to reflect on the meaning and value of illness, in every human situation. This opportunity is also offered to us by the World Day of the Sick which we shall be celebrating next Wednesday, 11 February, the liturgical Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes.
Despite the fact that illness is part of human experience, we do not succeed in becoming accustomed to it, not only because it is sometimes truly burdensome and grave, but also essentially because we are made for life, for a full life. Our “internal instinct” rightly makes us think of God as fullness of life indeed, as eternal and perfect Life. When we are tried by evil and our prayers seem to be in vain, then doubt besets us and we ask ourselves in anguish: what is God’s will? We find the answer to this very question in the Gospel. For example, in today’s passage we read that Jesus “healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons” (Mk 1: 34); in another passage from St Matthew it says that Jesus “went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people” (Mt 4: 23). Jesus leaves no room for doubt: God whose Face he himself revealed is the God of life, who frees us from every evil. The signs of his power of love are the healings he performed. He thus shows that the Kingdom of God is close at hand by restoring men and women to their full spiritual and physical integrity. I maintain that these cures are signs: they are not complete in themselves but guide us towards Christ’s message, they guide us towards God and make us understand that man’s truest and deepest illness is the absence of God, who is the source of truth and love. Only reconciliation with God can give us true healing, true life, because a life without love and without truth would not be life. The Kingdom of God is precisely the presence of truth and love and thus is healing in the depths of our being. One therefore understands why his preaching and the cures he works always go together: in fact, they form one message of hope and salvation.
Thanks to the action of the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ work is extended in the Church’s mission. Through the sacraments it is Christ who communicates his life to multitudes of brothers and sisters, while he heals and comforts innumerable sick people through the many activities of health-care assistance that Christian communities promote with fraternal charity. Thus they reveal the true Face of God, his love. It is true: very many Christians around the world priests, religious and lay people – have lent and continue to lend their hands, eyes and hearts to Christ, true physician of bodies and souls! Let us pray for all sick people, especially those who are most seriously ill, who can in no way provide for themselves but depend entirely on the care of others. May each one of them experience, in the solicitude of those who are beside them, the power and love of God and the richness of his saving grace. Mary, health of the sick, pray for us!
After the Angelus:
In these weeks there has been news of strong political tensions in Madagascar that have also provoked popular unrest. The Bishops of the Island have therefore established today as a day of prayer for national reconciliation and social justice. Deeply concerned about the particularly critical period that the country is experiencing, I ask you to join with Malagasy Catholics to entrust to the Lord those who have died in the demonstrations and to invoke from him, through the intercession of Mary Most Holy, a return to peace of mind, social tranquillity and civil coexistence.
As I have just said, the World Day of the Sick will be celebrated next 11 February, the Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes. In the afternoon I shall meet the sick and other pilgrims in St Peter’s Basilica, after the celebration of Holy Mass at which Cardinal Lozano Barragán, President of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, will preside. From this moment, I assure all the sick, health-care workers and volunteers in every part of the world of my special Blessing.
I greet all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors here today including those from the Saint Patrick’s Evangelization school in London. Today’s Gospel reminds us of the duty to bring Christ’s Good News to all the world. May your time in Rome be filled with joy and deepen your resolve to draw others to our Lord and his love. God bless you all!
Pope Benedict XVI
Angelus Address Sunday, February 5, 2012
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
This Sunday’s Gospel presents to us Jesus who heals the sick: first Simon Peter’s mother-in-law who was in bed with a fever and Jesus, taking her by the hand, healed her and helped her to her feet; then all the sick in Capernaum, tried in body, mind and spirit, and he “healed many… and cast out many demons” (Mk 1:34). The four Evangelists agree in testifying that this liberation from illness and infirmity of every kind was — together with preaching — Jesus’ main activity in his public ministry.
Illness is in fact a sign of the action of Evil in the world and in people, whereas healing shows that the Kingdom of God, God himself, is at hand. Jesus Christ came to defeat Evil at the root and instances of healing are an anticipation of his triumph, obtained with his death and Resurrection.
Jesus said one day: “those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (Mk 2:17). On that occasion he was referring to sinners, whom he came to call and to save. It is nonetheless true that illness is a typically human condition in which we feel strongly that we are not self-sufficient but need others. In this regard we might say paradoxically that illness can be a salutary moment in which to experience the attention of others and to pay attention to others!
However illness is also always a trial that can even become long and difficult. When healing does not happen and suffering is prolonged, we can be as it were overwhelmed, isolated, and then our life is depressed and dehumanized. How should we react to this attack of Evil? With the appropriate treatment, certainly — medicine in these decades has taken giant strides and we are grateful for it — but the Word of God teaches us that there is a crucial basic attitude with which to face illness and it is that of faith in God, in his goodness. Jesus always repeats this to the people he heals: your faith has made you well (cf. Mk 5:34, 36).
Even in the face of death, faith can make possible what is humanly impossible. But faith in what? In the love of God. This is the real answer which radically defeats Evil. Just as Jesus confronted the Evil One with the power of the love that came to him from the Father, so we too can confront and live through the trial of illness, keeping our heart immersed in God’s love.
We all know people who were able to bear terrible suffering because God gave them profound serenity. I am thinking of the recent example of Bl. Chiara Badano, cut off in the flower of her youth by a disease from which there was no escape: all those who went to visit her received light and confidence from her! Nonetheless, in sickness we all need human warmth: to comfort a sick person what counts more than words is serene and sincere closeness.
Dear friends, next Saturday, 11 February, the Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, is the World Day of the Sick. Let us too do as people did in Jesus’ day: let us present to him spiritually all the sick, confident that he wants to and can heal them. And let us invoke the intercession of Our Lady, especially for the situations of greater suffering and neglect. Mary, Health of the Sick, pray for us!
After the Angelus:
Dear brothers and sisters, today the Day for Life is being celebrated in Italy. It began in order to defend unborn life and was then extended to all the phases and conditions of human existence. This year the Message of the Bishops proposes the theme: “Youth Open to Life”. I join the Pastors of the Church in affirming that real youth is achieved in acceptance, in love and in the service to life. I rejoice at the meeting organized in Rome yesterday by the Schools of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of the Universities of Rome to reflect on the “Promotion and Protection of Unborn Human Life”. And I greet Bishop Lorenzo Leuzzi, the teachers and young people present today in St Peter’s Square. Welcome! Thank you for coming.
I offer greetings to all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors present for today’s Angelus. In the Gospel this Sunday, we learn of the healing that Jesus brought to many who were suffering from diseases of one kind or another. We commend to him all those known to us who are in need of healing and we ask him to take away our own hardness of heart, so that we may respond more generously to his love. May God bless all of you!
I wish you all a good Sunday!
