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A commentary on Mk  6, 7-13 (XV Sunday O. T.: July 12^th  2015)

After being refused by the people of Nazareth, Jesus, according to Mark, set up a new stage of his Mission involving in it the Twelve, the seed of a new people who accepted the Kingdom of God and made it flourish in villages and towns. In the text of Mark that we read this Sunday, we can find many points of meditation useful for our live as disciple missionaries. I just reflect a bit on four of them:

• He called the Twelve and started sending them

The Mission is not a fruit of a personal initiative, but of a call. On the way of missionary discipleship there are moments in which it seems that it is us that take the initiative, it is us that have a project for humanity, an interesting ideology, our clever way to look at things. But real discipleship only starts truly when, passed the stage of a self-centred mission, we come to realize that it is the Lord that calls us and sends us.

Moses and other important prophets have gone through this experience: Mission usually ends up in complete failure when it is taken as a personal way to become somebody in society, while it becomes fertile when it is taken as an answer to a call from God.

Even artists tell something similar to that prophetic experience.  Poets, for example, often say that it’s not they that look for words, buts it’s words that look for them; in fact, poetry reaches a special forceful expression when somehow it “imposes” itself to the poet, who has maybe worked hard with the words, but at the end he feel that the inspiration came as a gift. On the same way, in our missionary discipleship there must be a moment of surprising grace, an awareness of being freely called, breaking our barriers and our desires of self-control and personal ideologies or pretentious self-made projects… Only then Mission becomes really the Mission of the Lord, fertile, even if it has to go through failure and cross.

• Two by two

Sending the disciples out “two by two”, Jesus follows the Hebrew tradition, according to which, messengers are sent two by two, so that the message conveyed by the spokesman will be confirmed by his companion. Going on mission two by two the disciples sustain each other on their witness giving more credibility to the message of the new brotherhood.

Moreover, mission “two by two”  is no longer an individual, private mission, but it becomes a social, public proposal. Certainly, Jesus used to pray for hours alone, but his mission was always public: in synagogues and streets, in towns and villages, in private houses and public places. Jesus’ mission was not a private but a public and social affair. This does not mean that it makes mission easier, but a more authentic and credible one.

• To enter peoples’ homes

In the missionary practice of Jesus there are no reserved places: he preaches and heals everywhere.  Jesus’ mission does not exclude the Temple, but neither remains limited to it. Looking at that, we are sure that the Church’s mission today cannot be confined to parishes; it has to come out of parish’s premises and go to meet people wherever they are and live.

• To announce the nearness of the kingdom

Nearness: this is a key word in Jesus’s experience and mission. Jesus announces, with words and actions, that God is near to people and He performs actions of healing, liberation, forgiveness and love that makes people rise up and walk. This is the power Jesus has, the power that shares with his disciple missionaries, the power that make people rise and walk as free children of God.

Fr. Antonio Villarino

Roma

A commentary on Mk 6, 1-5 (XIV Sunday O.T: July 25th 2015)

Mark shows Jesus as a travelling master, who, after some time in and out of villages and towns near to the Galilee Lake, goes back to Nazareth, where He grew up and where He was not accepted by his neighbours, because He was just one of them. Mark explains this refusal with the well-known sentence: “No prophet has ever been accepted by his own people and at home”. And he concludes saying that Jesus was astonished at their incredulity.
It seems to me that Jesus’ experience – his refusal by his own people- is quite common and on my view reflects two errors that very often we make:

1) We imagine God as someone far away from our everyday life.
It happens all the time in history and in all religions; many people think that God has to be looked for in extraordinary events: in wonderful places, big cathedrals, special sanctuaries, in a very important person, over the clouds…. As if God would have nothing to do with what we are and do in our simple and ordinary lives. But Jesus teaches exactly the opposite; He teaches that God becomes one of us (Emmanuel): He is born as a displaced person, works as a carpenter, goes to the synagogue every Saturday, drinks, eats, and makes friends… And in all that He is and acts as the loved Son of the Father.
One way to explain this experience of God’s presence in our ordinary life is the famous sentence by Saint Theresa of Avila: “God is also among the kitchen pots”. That’s it: Do not look for God in extraordinary events but in the simple facts of your everyday life: in the working place, in the family, in friendship, in the honest fight for justice and peace… Certainly also in the simple and sincere prayer (with not so many words or gesticulation)… “Among the kitchen pots”.

2) To let a heavy heart grow in us and become cynics and hard with our neighbours
There’s a saying that goes more or less like this: “the person with les respect within a temple is the one who works in it”… That may happen to all of us with the people we live with: the members of our family or community, co-workers, parish priest… Living near them, we are in danger of seeing only their limits and defects, overlooking the many good deeds that they probably are doing. So far from taking the opportunity of our nearness to love them and understand them, we end up in a hipper-critical attitude that makes it difficult for us to discover the message that God wants to give us through tem, in spite of their limits and defects. God will not come to us in the dress of a perfect person, but in the concrete reality of people around us.
As I meditate on this text form Mark, I pray to the Lord to acquire that humility that makes us able to recognize Jesus in the humble prophet of Nazareth and in the people that live with me and are for me a sign of God’s presence in my concrete reality, with its opportunities and problems, its rights and wrongs, its successes and failures.
Lord, do not allow me to become arrogant or cynic like the people of Nazareth. Let my heart be always open to acknowledge your humble presence around me, in spite of my own limits and the limits of others.
Fr. Antonio Villarino
Rome

A commentary on Mk 5, 21-43 (XIII Sunday OT: June 28th 2015)

We read today Mark’s chapter five, in which we continue watching Jesus on both sides of Galilee lake with a clear message of God’s nearness to the poor and those with a “broken heart”; a message that is conveyed, not only in inspiring words, buts also in concrete gestures that confirm the words and give them a kind of “physical” consistency. Jesus performs what we can call “messianic signs”, that is, concrete actions that reveal God’s presence among his people from both “sides” of the lake: Gerasa and Capharnaum

From “impure” to God’s children
In today’s Reading we are told about the story of two women (a twelve year old girl and a grown up woman who has been sick for twelve years). In spite of being impure (as a dead body or as someone loosing blood), both are touched by Jesus and they are restored, not only to live, but also to their dignity as God’s children, able to rise up (“Get up”), to believe (“Your faith has saved you”), and to share in the banquet of life (“Give her something to eat”).
Some people may look at this episode as if Jesus were a magician, with special powers, able to produce magic effects… Certainly I have no doubts about Jesus’ power. But I do not think that this is the right perspective to understand what happened in the river of Galilee Lake or what it continues to happen with many believers today. The right perspective is to consider this and other episodes as “messianic signs”, that is, actions and gestures that flow out of two fundamental elements:
–The extraordinary capacity that Jesus has to love and be in communion with people in their concrete situations, beyond and in spite of traditional taboos; to be in deep and close relationship with people, taking very seriously the reality of each person; to communicate to others his own experience of the Father’s loving nearness. As Benedict XVI says, only love redeems. When somebody is loved, he or she recovers the dignity and becomes able to rise up and have full live.
– The faith of humble people, who, threatened by sickness and death, raise their hearts and their hopes to God as their last refuge. In my missionary live in Africa, Europe and America, I have met quite often people like the dad of that twelve years old girl o that woman in despair because of a humiliating sickness.
Before such situation of distress, people look for any kind of possible help: medicine, prayer, advice… anything that can be a ray of hope. Many people rebuke them, scoff them, pity them… But they need to be taken seriously and respected in their anguish and hope. This is precisely what Jesus does: from his deep experience of communion with the Father he is able to be in communion with those God’s children who are crossing a sea of difficulties and despair and having doubts about their own value and dignity.

Word and action
All human beings, included those who appear most self-assured, are feeble creatures exposed to sicknesses, suffering, despise, dangers and, after all, death, even if a miracle expands our limited time of existence. That’s why I do not think that the objective of Jesus’ miracles was to extend for a while our live, but an altogether different live, marked by the confidence in a real, dignifying and fruitful God’s love. After Jesus “sign” to them, the two women we see in today’s reading could say truly: “I am important for Jesus, I am important for God, I am important for the community of Jesus’ friends. What is important for me is not that I am sick, but that I am a GOD’s CHILD.
This is the central message given by Jesus. And to pass it out to people, He uses words and “messianic signs” that appear in a double quality:
–They are quite concrete and practical, related to the real life of people; they are a concrete help to solve a concrete problem of people’s life.
–They go beyond their concrete effect: even if they are quite material, they are more than that: they communicate something very especial about the person, empowering her to get up, enjoy life and become a helper to others
That is why the Christian mission, following the steps of Jesus, walks always on this double principle: word and action, faith and charity, material and spiritual. Both dimensions are essential and recall each other: word without action degenerates in lie; action without word misses its saving meaning.
Fr. Antonio Villarino
Roma

A Commentary on Mk 4, 35-41 (¡2th Sunday of O.T., June 21first 2015)

To cross boundaries
Last Sunday we saw Jesus by the Sea of Galilee teaching to a large crowd about the Kingdom of God in an inspiring language. Today we read how Jesus, on the eve of the same day, invited his disciples to get into a boat and cross to “the other side”. It is quite evident for me that this expression –“the other side”- has in the gospel a deeper meaning than just a geographical one. We know that the other side of the lake was populated by people of different culture and religious practices. As a matter of fact, several times in the gospels Jesus appears pushing his disciples to walk to other villages and towns and to go and meet Samaritans, sinners, pagans an other kinds of “different people”.
This missionary attitude of Jesus was assumed by the Church from the very beginning, after Resurrection, till our times. Paul, for example, was “forced” by the Spirit to cross the border from Asia into Europe (Macedonia); Francois Xavier expanded the Gospel to the Far East Asia; Daniel Comboni, with others, opened the borders of Africa to the Church… And son many other missionaries.
In our days, the Church cannot remain locked in a glorious missionary past. Also today the Church is invited by the Spirit to cross new geographical, cultural and religious boundaries to share the treasure of the Gospel with XXI century humanity: with refugees and migrants, with young people who look for a new future and old people who feel abandoned, people who move around as seep with no shepherd… We all should ask ourselves: To which side does Jesus invites us to cross today? Where are the boundaries to which that my family, my parish, my community should move now?

To get into the sea and resist the squalls
We know that in the Bible the sea is an image of the evil that we can meet in the world, with its dangerous waves and violent storms, that can destroy the small boat of our personal life or even the fragile community we belong to.
In fact, when we leave the small “protected world” of our routine, where we have everything under control, surely we face obstacles and problems that we are not sure how to overcome. When we leave behind the “existential walls” of our parish, family or community, most surely we will have to confront a hostile world, opposed to our way of life. The outside world can become a formidable threat to our weak faith and fragile community.
A moment like this is what Mark describes in todays’ reading, reminding us of the disciples lesson: they did not act as super-heroes; they acknowledged their fear and prayed very sincerely from their anguish. That was the moment to shout out to the Lord with great sincerity and conviction: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

…And the Lord was with them
Mark’s story brings to us the experience of those first members of the Church. They experienced persecution and strong oppositions; in those circumstances they doubted and were afraid, thinking that the Lord was sleeping and absent, but at the end they experienced that the Lord was very much alive and full or power over evil, in spite of their little faith.
For us, as for the first disciples, it’s very important that, in any missionary initiative, we carry the Lord in “our boat”. We should not go on mission only with our enthusiasm, strength and creativity. If the mission is just our own initiative, when the wind blows, most probably we are going to sink. But if we take the Lord with us (in his Word, his sacraments, his community, his Spirit…), when the difficult time comes, surely we are going to feel his presence, we will be able to shout out to him, He will answer and we shall reach the other side ready to spread the Good News

Fr. Antonio Villarino
Roma