Sunday 5 (B-2006): Grasped by love
(Read Mark 1:29-39)
When the vigorous thirty-year old called Jesus walked into the town
of Capernaum,
it caused a revolution, a revolution of hope.
Without cell-phones or blackberries, word spread
like wildfire of his works of healing and exorcism. Even Peter’s mother-in-law was freed from her fever by the touch
and grasp of Jesus’ hand! (Some say this was the only ill-advised miracle Jesus ever performed!)
The reaction to Jesus was universal: the whole
town came crowding round the door of Peter’s house. Concealing their shame by the setting of the sun, the sick and possessed
were brought to Jesus.
The presence of Jesus is magnetic because it is
filled with love. What is the power in him that heals and delivers from evil, if not love?
The word that went round the town about Jesus
awakened hope and the desire to be in his presence. But that same word would have remained without effect if his presence
had been denied them. Words of hope are good; but far better is the fulfillment of that hope in possessing the reality.
Jesus not only promises: he delivers, and what
he delivers is his life-giving love. As the Holy Father’s new encyclical states, “Deus caritas est”, “God
is love.”
Love seeks to be present to the beloved. It seeks
union and communion. It reaches beyond any barrier, including death.
The love of Jesus seeks to strip mankind of all
that impedes its full and total communion with God.
Imagine you are the sick one lying in bed.
Imagine how it must feel to see Jesus approach
you, how your heart would thump with a mixture of fear and anticipation.
Imagine his hand touching yours, then grasping
it and lifting you up.
Imagine the sickness some how being drained out
of you through your hand into the hand of Jesus, and his strength invading your very bones.
Imagine the gaze of his power, his tenderness,
his reassurance and his love.
Imagine Jesus whispering to you, “this is
nothing in comparison with what I will do for you on the last Day when I raise you up from death.”
Yet there is no need to just to imagine!
Rather, each of us here can say, “I know that Jesus has in reality done much more for me!”
But, oh, how slow we are to believe it, to know it!
Peter’s mother-in-law could not have dreamed of receiving what you and I have actually
received from the love of Jesus. That crowd in front of the door of Peter’s house could never have imagined what Jesus had in mind for all of us.
Jesus’ love would be all too little if it
only cured us from a fever, or even expelled a demon. These were mere signs of the real work of love that he would accomplish
for us.
Bodily sicknesses, no matter how dreadful and
drastic they may seem to us (and none of their pain or horror must be denied) are not the real threat to our happiness and
peace.
For they are but the effects of the genuine root
of our brokenness, and that root is, and its only name can ever be, sin and its
ultimate effect which is damnation or spiritual death.
The presence of Jesus comes to its fullest expression
of power and love in the hour when he died for us.
Then, he absorbed into himself not only the sicknesses
of a few, but the sins, the guilt, the shame and the death of every human person ever to exist.
In his body, which contains the fullness of his
divinity, he also drew unto himself every sin ever committed by any human being.
Therefore, in and within his body, filled with
divinity yet also filled with our sin and death, he both destroyed sin and communicated to every human being a share in his
own divinity. In his body the “strange duel” between life and death was fought – and won!
Why did our sin not destroy him? Because he himself
did not sin; therefore neither sin nor death nor damnation could hold him.
Jesus absorbed the fever of Peter’s mother-in-law
and imparted to her at the same moment a share in his strength. But for any of us who so wish it, Jesus will absorb our sin
and our death into himself and impart to us, to our souls and to our bodies, a share in his own divinity.
This is the burning desire of the burning heart
of Jesus: not that we would hold back from him when we sin (that is the last thing
he wants!), but that we would, like the townspeople of Capernaum, crowd around the door and seek the healing and liberating
touch of his body.
This is salvation not merely hoped for but given.
This is not merely talk of eternal life, but its reality.
You may object. You do not see Jesus as they did.
You do not have access to him as they did...
But, oh, how wrong you would be! How misplaced
your objection would be! Do not think in this worldly way of immediate experience of the senses. Rather, think, feel and desire
according to your faith! Your faith!
Because the truth is that Jesus is even more accessible
to you than he ever was to the townspeople of Capernaum: he
is truly and really present here in the Eucharist, yours for the taking, without complaint and without reserve.
Is this not the faith of the Church, and thus
your faith?
Through the Eucharist, that same body which once
stood in Capernaum stands here in this place. Not only that.
Through the Eucharist, there stands among us the Jesus who hung on the Cross, who rose from the tomb and who is, at this very
moment, at the right hand of the Father in heaven.
The Eucharist is the way and the gift by which
the love and power of Jesus are present with us until the end of time. Did he not give us the Mass so that our hearts too
would be given hope through the Word proclaimed to us, and so that that hope would be fulfilled in the reception of his Body?
If only we would realize the magnitude of this
gift!
If only we could stir our hearts to believe in
the liberality and intensity of his loving presence in the Eucharist!
If only we could stop worrying about our earthly
life as if it were the be all and end all, and instead channel our concern towards the freedom of our souls from sin!
And what is that freedom? It is being “grasped”
in our deepest soul by the loving hand of Jesus and allowing his eternal love to flow like healing balm into the farthest
recesses of our hearts.
If that were so, then the whole of this neighborhood
would be crowding around the door of our church, the door of the tabernacle, the door of the confessional.
How joyful the heart of Jesus would then be, how
we would then fulfill his anxious hope for us!
While the greatness and power of his loving presence
among us are always there, how much more they would be known, felt and desired if we would but try to love him with something
of the passion with which he first has loved us!
How the revolution of hope would spread if we
were to witness more willingly to his presence in this place, in this Eucharist and thus in our lives!
Do not neglect to come through the door of this
church to visit him!
Do not neglect to come through the door of the
confessional, the door into his healing forgiveness!
Do not at last neglect to come and receive, worthily
and humbly, his Eucharistic Body which is your doorway into eternal life!
Msgr. Peter Magee,
Sunday, February 5th,
2006,
Annunciation, DC: 5.30 pm Vigil
& 10.00 am
