20180210
HEALING THROUGH
ENCOUNTER WITH JESUS IN THE EUCHARIST
10 FEBRUARY, 2018, Saturday, 5th
Week, Ordinary Time
Readings at Mass
Liturgical
Colour: White.
|
First reading
|
|
1 Kings 12:26-32,13:33-34 ©
|
|
The prophecy of the separation of Israel
|
Jeroboam thought to himself, ‘As things are, the kingdom will
revert to the House of David. If this people continues to go up to the Temple
of the Lord in Jerusalem to offer sacrifices, the people’s heart will turn back
again to their lord, Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will put me to death.’ So
the king thought this over and then made two golden calves; he said to the
people, ‘You have been going up to Jerusalem long enough. Here are your gods,
Israel; these brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ He set up one in Bethel
and the people went in procession all the way to Dan in front of the other. He
set up the temple of the high places and appointed priests from ordinary
families, who were not of the sons of Levi. Jeroboam also instituted a feast in
the eighth month, on the fifteenth of the month, like the feast that was kept
in Judah, and he went up to the altar. That was how he behaved in Bethel,
sacrificing to the calves he had made; and at Bethel he put the priests of the
high places he had established.
Jeroboam did
not give up his wicked ways but went on appointing priests for the high places
from the common people. He consecrated as priests of the high places any who
wished to be. Such conduct made the House of Jeroboam a sinful House, and
caused its ruin and extinction from the face of the earth.
|
Responsorial Psalm
|
|
Psalm 105(106):6-7,19-22 ©
|
O Lord, remember me out of the love you have for
your people.
Our sin is the sin of our fathers;
we have done wrong, our deeds have been evil.
Our fathers when they were in Egypt
paid no heed to your wonderful deeds.
O Lord, remember me out of the love you have for
your people.
They fashioned a calf at Horeb
and worshipped an image of metal,
exchanging the God who was their glory
for the image of a bull that eats grass.
O Lord, remember me out of the love you have for
your people.
They forgot the God who was their saviour,
who had done such great things in Egypt,
such portents in the land of Ham,
such marvels at the Red Sea.
O Lord, remember me out of the love you have for
your people.
|
Gospel Acclamation
|
Mt4:4
|
Alleluia, alleluia!
Man does not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.
Alleluia!
|
Gospel
|
Mark 8:1-10 ©
|
|
The feeding of the four thousand
|
A great crowd had gathered, and they had nothing to eat. So Jesus
called his disciples to him and said to them, ‘I feel sorry for all these
people; they have been with me for three days now and have nothing to eat. If I
send them off home hungry they will collapse on the way; some have come a great
distance.’ His disciples replied, ‘Where could anyone get bread to feed these
people in a deserted place like this?’ He asked them, ‘How many loaves have
you?’ ‘Seven’ they said. Then he instructed the crowd to sit down on the
ground, and he took the seven loaves, and after giving thanks he broke them and
handed them to his disciples to distribute; and they distributed them among the
crowd. They had a few small fish as well, and over these he said a blessing and
ordered them to be distributed also. They ate as much as they wanted, and they
collected seven basketfuls of the scraps left over. Now there had been about
four thousand people. He sent them away and immediately, getting into the boat
with his disciples, went to the region of Dalmanutha.
HEALING THROUGH ENCOUNTER WITH JESUS
IN THE EUCHARIST
SCRIPTURE
READINGS: [ 1 KGS 12:26-32; 13:33-34; PS 106:6-7, 19-22; MK 8:1-10 ]
Today’s readings should lead us to reflect on the close link
between sickness and sin, whether remotely or proximately. Sin
is alienation from God and from each other. As a result of our loss of
focus, man has usurped the place of God and made himself a god. That
means he can no longer depend on anyone but himself. Inevitably, he loses
his balance in life and all integrity within himself and his relationship with
the world. This has brought about his bodily illness because there is a
lack of integrity between his mind, body and spirit. The loss of the
preternatural gifts, resulting in death, pain, ignorance and concupiscence, is
the consequence of Adam’s disobedience. Seduced and misled by the serpent
who said to his wife Eve, “You will not certainly die, for God knows that when
you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing
good and evil” (Gen 3:4-5), his pride caused him to deceive himself into
thinking that he can do without God.
The sin of the Israelites is the same sin as that of Adam’s.
It is a repetition of the sin of pride and disobedience. Already in the
Book of Exodus, we read how the Israelites made for themselves a golden calf
whilst Moses was meeting the Lord at the Mountain. Again, we see this
same attempt of Jeroboam. He “made two golden calves; he said to the
people, ‘You have been going up to Jerusalem long enough. Here are your
gods, Israel; these brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” It was out
of ambition, fear and selfishness that he turned away from the true God of
Israel and erected his own sanctuaries, altars for sacrifices, appointed his
own priests that were not of the Levi tribe. He did all these to prevent
his people from going to Jerusalem for fear that the people might return to the
Kingdom of David. So to restrain contacts between his people and those of
Judah, he duplicated the shrines purely for his self-interest. As a
result, he led his people to sin, as their religion and worship became
contaminated and diluted by pagan influences. When God is abandoned, sin
increases. There is no greater sin than the sin of idolatry, for the sin
of Adam is in fact the sin of idolatry. Anyone who worships himself is
committing the sin of idolatry, which will lead to every other sin.
It was for this reason that Christ come. He came
to reconcile us with God so that we can find focus in life again. He came
to show us who His Father really is. He came to reveal to us the mercy
and compassion of God. Indeed, the healing ministry was central to
the life of Jesus. His healing miracles were signs that He has come to
overthrow the reign of Satan and destroy sin. The miracles of Jesus were,
on one hand, the expression of God’s compassion for His suffering and afflicted
people. On the other hand, it was also a demonstration of the power of
the Spirit at work in Jesus manifesting the divine presence in Him. By
healing the sick, which is the consequence of original sin and also quite often
the fruits of our own personal sins, it shows that God has come to restore
us. By living a foolish, selfish, self-centered, ill-disciplined and wanton
life, we cannot but bring misery upon ourselves and even our loved ones.
St Paul, warning the Galatians about living a licentious life, wrote, “Do not
be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to
please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to
please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” (Gal 6:7-8)
Jesus came to teach us about God’s love and the way to live a life of
love and service. This is brought out in today’s
gospel story. By the act of multiplying the loaves for the Seven
Thousand, Jesus wanted the crowd to know that only God can satisfy their
spiritual and physical hunger completely. And when God gives, He gives
abundantly, beyond human calculation. This was what the disciples learnt
in this miracle. When they were wondering how to feed so many people,
Jesus worked this miracle to let them know that He is the Bread of Life.
Just as God gave manna to their fathers in the desert, so now Jesus, the Bread
of life, is doing the same by feeding them in a deserted place.
Accordingly, the best place to be healed is in the Eucharist.
Many Catholics who are seeking spiritual, physical, emotional and psychological
healing fail to realize that they have the greatest means of healing before
them, namely, the Eucharist. Being the real presence of our Risen Lord,
the Eucharist has the power to transmit the healing grace of God. At
every mass, just before the reception of Holy Communion, we repeat the words of
the Centurion, saying, “Lord I am not worthy that you should come under my
roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” Indeed, since
Jesus is personally present in the Eucharist, He too can heal us the way He
healed the sick when He was in His earthly life at Palestine.
Today, as in the days of old, there are so many people who need healing
from all kinds of illnesses. Like the apostles, we too ask: how can we
find the strength and resources to help them? The answer of
course is to bring Jesus to them. And what better way to do this than to
give them the Eucharist, the presence of Jesus par excellence. As the
gospel tells us, after Jesus multiplied the loaves for them, they ate their
fill and still they collected seven basket loads of leftover. So with
Jesus, all can be satisfied.
But how is this so? Faith in the healing power of the Eucharist
must not be reduced to mere superstition. We must keep the unity
between the Word and the Sacrament. The gospel tells us that Jesus
taught them for three days before He broke bread for them. In other
words, before we can celebrate the sacrament of the Eucharist, we must be
converted in the mind through careful listening of the Word of God.
Unless the mind is renewed and converted, the heart cannot be changed.
Unless a person is brought to repentance and contrition, no effective healing
can take place, and even if it does, the person will once again be wounded
emotionally, psychologically and physically by his sins. But if the mind
is renewed and the heart is converted, then the person will avoid falling into
sin again and save himself from the effects of sin. Furthermore, unless
we have heard the Word, then we can in faith recognize Jesus in the Eucharist.
This means that we must keep that integral and balanced unity between the
celebration of the Word and the Sacrament. Sometimes, we tend to
overemphasize the Word at the expense of the Sacrament; or conversely,
emphasize the sacrament and neglect to attentively listen to the Word of God
proclaimed at mass.
In the final analysis, we must ask whether we have encountered
Jesus, the Word made Flesh, incarnated in the Sacrament of the
Eucharist. If we fail to have a personal faith encounter with Jesus in
the Eucharist, then the Eucharist cannot feed us or heal us. Once we
encounter Jesus, we will be healed physically, psychologically, emotionally and
spiritually. Encounter with the person of Jesus will heal all our
wounds.
However, the healing grace of the Eucharist extends beyond the
reception of the sacrament. We become what we eat. So we become
more like Jesus when we receive Him, putting on His mind and heart. In
turn we too become mediators of Christ’s love and compassion to others.
Like Jesus, we will also become healers ourselves, reaching out to others who
are as wounded as we were. Like Jesus, we too must in turn be motivated
by pastoral charity, shown concretely in our actions, our compassion for them
in their sufferings and needs.
For this to happen, we need priests chosen by the Lord.
If the Eucharist is the summit of the Church’s liturgy and life, then without priests,
we will not have the Eucharist. That is why we must continue to pray for
young men to have the courage and generosity to give themselves to the
priesthood. Without the Eucharist, the people of God would be like those
Seven Thousand, hungry for food. Priests are chosen by God, not by men,
as what Jeroboam did. He tried to dissuade his people from going to the
Temple of Jerusalem by erecting his own temples, appointing priests who were
not from the tribe of Levi and established his own feasts. The truth is
that just because he was doing and imitating what was being done at the Temple
of Jerusalem, it does not mean that he could bring about the presence of God
for the people. Similarly, without ordained ministers, the people of God
will be impoverished and be deprived of the healing grace that comes from the
Eucharist. Let us therefore seek a deeper appreciation of the Eucharist,
and at the same time pray for an increase of holy priestly vocations.
Written by The Most Rev William Goh,
Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore © All Rights Reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment