The Need for Balance in Our LIves

Homily for February 8, 2015 (5th Sunday in Ordinary Time, B)
Job 7:1-4. 6-7; Psalm 147; 1 Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23; Mark 1:29-39

“I’m sorry.  Did I catch you at a bad moment?”

I almost felt myself saying that to Job in today’s first reading.  His description of his life as “drudgery” with “months of misery” and his life as that of a “hireling” which will “come to an end without hope” doesn’t make him one of those people with whom we would want to spend a lot of time.  Yet his agony is quite understandable.  How would any of us feel if we had lost nearly everyone and everything dear to us in a manner of moments?

His friends have come to check in on him; but instead of consoling him they (reflecting the common beliefs of the day) assume that he must have done something wrong to deserve such monumental misfortune.  Job, however, insists on his innocence and can’t understand why so many bad things—illness and the losses of his children and property—have happened to him …and all at once.  He tries to make sense of it all, but he can’t.  The best he can do is lament

Almost as an antidote to Job’s self-pitying soliloquy, Psalm 147 describes a God who is not indifferent to our suffering. Indeed, it describes God as good, gracious, might.  It is the Lord, the psalmist assures us, who rebuilds what is destroyed; gathers the scattered; heals the broken-hearted; binds up wounds; sustains the lowly; and casts down the wicked.  God not only cares about us, God is acting on our behalf.

Jesus embodies those characteristics in our gospel passage.  Having just preached and driven out an unclean spirit in the synagogue (remember last Sunday’s gospel), he first heals Peter’s mother-in-law and then all the sick in the town.  We witness that his authority and healing power extend to all who are sick or have troubled spirits.  Yet in the midst of this almost frenetic activity, Jesus also makes time to go off to a deserted place to spend some time in prayer, which helps him to rest and be renewed to continue his mission.

Those of us who are involved in the church’s mission recognize that need for balance in our lives.  At the same time, however, we are also called to live with a certain amount of urgency about the gospel.   In our second reading, St. Paul describes his ministry of proclaiming it as “an obligation” that he disregards at his own peril.  As he often does in his various letters, he felt compelled to defend himself, his ministry and the rights he has against the attacks of those who challenged his authority and authenticity as an apostle.

Here, however, he relies not on his ancestry, credentials or skills but instead on things that are more fundamental and enduring:  generosity, service, adaptability and creativity.  He has made himself all things to all people not because he is a chameleon or hypocrite but because he has surrendered himself totally to Christ and the mission he has been given.  From the First Century, St. Paul is a model of evangelization for us in the 21st Century. +