Africa

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

A commentary on  a Mc 1, 21-28 (Sunday, February First 2015)

The Fourth Sunday’s reading from the Gospel of Mark is the first part of the so called “Capernaum day”, after the imprisonment of the Baptist and the calling of the first disciples. In my reflexion I will follow three points: the place where Jesus was, the special value of his word, his fight against the “unclean spirit”.

The geography of todays’ gospel

We are at Capernaum, a town in northern Galilee, by the Galilean lake, a crossroads between the Palestine, Lebanon and Assyria. Capernaum as other towns of the time and of today, it was a place full of life, with positive and negative elements. Surely there was commerce and richness; political, religious and military leaders; “imperial roads” that connected it to a “globalized world”, etc. But there was also poverty, confusion, corruption, injustices,  poor faith, exploitation of the poor and other evils in private lives and public structures. There was also a synagogue, where some faithful people used to go, even if sometimes with fatigue and boredom.

Capernaum, in fact, may be the image of our own towns and our own culture, where we can find so much life, in its good and bad side alike: richness end poverty, generosity and egoism, confusion and search of truth, corruption and responsibility… And it is in this town and Culture that we, as disciple missionary, are called to be witnesses to the Kingdom announced by Jesus.

Jesus’ relevant word

Jesus used to teach everywhere, including the Synagogue, where many used to go out of faithfulness to tradition, but also with a kind of resignation, to listen to a word that usually would not mean any change in their lives. But that day there was a surprise. That preacher was different, out of his mouth came a word that touched life, that produced admiration, praise and the desire to change.

We may ask ourselves: Why was it like that? Why the word of Jesus was relevant, full of authority?

On my opinion, any word has authority and relevance whenever it is sincere, authentic and related to any concrete dimension of real life. When that happens, the word meets in the hearer an echo that sounds like a personalized truth.

One day, I had the opportunity to listen to Mother Teresa of Calcuta. A multitude of us were listening to her with admiration and a special emotion. What was special in that little, old and, I may say, “ugly” woman? We can say that nothing was special.  She just said, without any oratory tricks, what all of us knew. And yet, we all were touched and moved by the sincerity and authenticity of those simple words, that were just communication of a true experience of life.

That is what, in my opinion, happened with Jesus –and much more. And that is what may happen with our own words, when they transmit our sincere experience of enlightenment, forgiveness, consolation, and courage, discipleship, in a life lived on the steps of Jesus.

With Jesus, also we are called to be in our “Capernaums” of today “tellers” of authentic words of truth, justice, consolation, forgiveness… words of life. In the family, in the working place, in church, on the road, everywhere we are called to disciple-missionaries with words that come out of the authenticity of our lives.

The battle between the “unclean spirits” and the “Holy one of God”

In the Bible, including the gospels, there is much talk about “unclean” and “impure” spirits. It is a language that we do not use any more. But the reality to which those words relate is still very much with us.

With those words we speak of that part of the world, that is enemy to God and to human happiness. That side of the world made of lies, confusion, injustice, chaos, slavery… that prevents us and the humanity as such from growing up as children of the Father, free and freedom makers.

Let us remember, for example, the absurd violence that we have lately in several parts of the world; let us remember the general corruption in politics and religion, the enormous imbalance between poor and rich people, the stupid pride many use to humiliate the simple ones. Let us remember the many  addictions that are becoming a problem for many of us: drugs, alcohol, disorderly sex, exaggerated good consuming…

This world of corruption, injustice, impurity, that is in us and around us, becomes violent and aggressive when it meets with “the Holy one”, when it is confronted by the limpid word of Jesus.

But Jesus is able to win this battle. Not with the arms of the world (richness, pride, lie) but with the only arm of his word an action, “rooted” in the Fathers ’love, in which he becomes a Son, Free and freedom maker.

And we, in as much as we are disciples, united to this Son of God, we become also free and freedom makers, able to fight against the unclean spirits, not with the arms of the world but with the power of God, the power of our humble witness of the marvellous things Jesus Christ is doing in us. There is our strength, the strenght of a missionary church to overcome the evil present in the word.

Fr. Antonio Villarino MCCJ. Rome