House-community, “Emergency hospital”

A Commentary on Mc 1, 29-39: Sunday, February 8th 2015

We continue, in this fifth Sunday of the year, reading the first chapter of Mark, which narrates a Jesus’ Day at Capernaum. Last Sunday we read the first part, contemplating Jesus at the synagogue confronting the “impure spirit”. Today we see him outside the synagogue. For my commentary, I will put my attention on four words:

The house:
Jesus leaves the synagogue and enters a house, Peter’s home, with Andrew, James and John, apart from Peter himself, whose house becomes an operational centre for the first community of Jesus’ missionary disciples. The gospels mention quite often this experience of Jesus entering into peoples’ homes, especially public sinners’ homes: Zacchaeus, Levi, the Pharisee… His meals become a sign of fraternity and feast, pardon and new life. Also the first Christian communities used to gather in someone’s house: this was giving the Church an style of nearness and fraternity, of a life connected to the joys and sufferings of ordinary people.
Today, I know families that welcome the Lord in their homes in so many ways, transforming their houses into places of encountering for Jesus’ disciples and for everyone in need of support. They are real disciples. With them I dream of a lay people’s church, a “homely church”, very much in touch with peoples’ lives; a church, community of communities, made of friends who visit each other, help each other, protect each other in moments of distress, listen together to the Word and praise the Lord with one voice.

The house, “emergency hospital”.
With Jesus’ presence, Simon’ s home becomes a place for the revelation of God’s mercy and free love for all, but especially for those in distress and need. A love that heals, dignifies, forgives, reconciles and invites to serve.
This is what Pope Francis, in his direct language, has called “the Church, Emergency hospital”, a server church in a violent world, that produces many wounded people, physically, economically, morally. Fortunately, many of us haven known a Church like that: So many health centres in every corner of the Earth! So many schools for poor children! So many elders cared for! So many persons listened to, consoled, pardoned!
Somehow, we can be “proud” of a Church that is serving in so many ways: with our money, with our time, with our live, with our love. But, at the same time, I feel this Sunday a strong call to conversion. There are in the world so many wounded people in need of attention; my Church (my family, my community, my parish) cannot be a locked up and indifferent castle, but it must be a home transformed into an “emergency hospital”, like the house of Peter in Capernaum.

Sunset and sunrise: work and prayer, word and silence.
At sunrise, Jesus goes to a solitary place, evidently to meet in intimacy the Fountain of his interior life, to re-establish the love links with the Father, to discern all that is saying and doing. Avoiding to get lost in a “foolish” and senseless activism.
Somebody has said that the future belongs to contemplative people, no to those who run from place to place, multiplying empty word and dry hearts. I think that to invest in prayer and contemplations, is the best investment that we can make for ourselves and for our community. Without that prayer we are like dry leaves carried away, without any direction, by the strong winds of our time.

New frontiers
In today’s Reading, the disciples, together with the crowds, want Jesus to remain with tem, trapped in a web of interested affections and egoisms. “We are so well together! “Let us build a place where to enjoy our being together!”, they seemed to say. But Jesus does not allow himself to be trapped by these “reasonable” words; he remains free to go to other places where the announcement of the Kingdom is needed, not confusing mission with auto-satisfaction or the shallow joy of being applauded…
Success can be a danger, a trap, that makes us accommodate to what has been already acquired. I think of so many parishes that are so happy because their church is full at Sunday masses. But those people going to mass are a minority among the thousands of people living in that area. Where are all the others?
I think that the Jesus’ missionary passion is pushing us to go further, over our barriers, to open ourselves (individual disciples and communities) to new people, new human groups, new places, new “areopaghi”; not to be happy with what we already have, but to look always for new horizons, in private life and in community life.
Fr. Antonio Villarino
Rome