Yesterday, we heard about Jesus entering the synagogue in Capernaum on the sabbath, where he taught with authority and where he cured a man possessed of an unclean spirit. We hear the continuation of this narrative from the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel today. Jesus, with some of his apostles, enters the house of Simon Peter, where he meets Simon’s mother-in-law, where he cures her of her fever. What I love about this story is that in response to her healing, the mother-in-law immediately waits on Jesus and the other disciples. They don’t even give the poor woman time to rest! Caryll Houselander, a lay Roman Catholic ecclesiastical artist, mystic, popular religious writer and poet, wrote this about Christian service: “We could scrub the floor for a tired friend, or dress a wound for a patient in a hospital, or lay the table and wash up for the family; but we shall not do it in martyr spirit or with that worse spirit of self-congratulation, of feeling that we are making ourselves more perfect, more unselfish, more positively kind. We shall do it just for one thing, that our hands make Christ's hands in our life, that our service may let Christ serve through us, that our patience may bring Christ's patience back to the world.” We do not serve others in order to merit our salvation. Quite the contrary - our salvation is a freely given gift from God that we could never merit on our own devices. Rather, we are called to serve others out of the joy of our faith, out of the joy in which Simon’s mother-in-law serve Jesus and the others. May we hear this call to Christian service.
No comments:
Post a Comment