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 today. Jesus and his companions enter the house of Simon Peter, where he meets Simon’s mother-in-law, where he cures her of fever. I love how in response to her healing, the mother-in-law immediately waits on Jesus and the other disciples. She does not even take time to rest; she is busy serving others. Caryll Houselander, a lay Roman Catholic ecclesiastical artist, mystic, 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 to prove that we have earned salvation in Christ. To the contrary, our salvation is a freely given gift from God that we could never merit on our own. Rather, we are called to serve others in joy out of our faith, out of the joy in which Simon’s mother-in-law serves Jesus and the others. May we hear this call to Christian service.
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