Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, February 3, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time, B, Vigil
February 3, 2024

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday when we will have an opportunity to examine the beginnings of Jesus’ public ministry and get a glimpse of an ordinary day in his life. His priorities can help us examine our own, both with regard to how we’re receiving his work in our life as well as how we’re continuing his work.
• Jesus began his day by preaching for a long time in the synagogue on the Sabbath, which as any priest will tell you after a Sunday morning, must have been somewhat exhausting all-day work since people would return home normally only at sunset. Then he went to Simon’s house where he healed his mother-in-law.
• Then, since it was after sundown and the Sabbath was over, the people of Capernaum brought to Jesus “all who were ill or possessed by demons.” St. Mark tells us that the “whole town was gathered around the door.” Jesus cured the sick and cast out demons. It was likely very grueling work, because in no part of the Gospel did Jesus ever do “general healing services,” but cured the ill or the possessed one-by-one so that he could establish a personal relationship with each grateful recipient and hopefully bring them from a physical cure to a far more important spiritual one. It was probably quite late by the time he finished. He arose the next morning, St. Mark tells us, “very early before dawn,” and went to a deserted place to pray, showing that prayer was more important to him than sleep and setting for us an example not to make excuses that we have no time to pray. The evangelist tells us that Simon and his companions, when they didn’t find Jesus, went out to hunt him down. When they finally found him, they said, “Everyone is looking for you.” Without question the hordes had brought many other of the sick and the possessed from surrounding regions to Jesus and were hoping for a sequel to what they had witnessed the night before.
• “Everyone is looking for you.” We might have expected that Jesus’ response would have been one of jubilation. After all, he would later say, “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will refresh you” (Mt 11:28).  He wanted people coming to him with their burdens. He wanted to give them refreshment. But Jesus, when told that everyone was looking for him, didn’t respond by saying, “Hallelujah!” Rather, much to their surprise, he stated, “Let us go on to the nearby villages, so that I may preach there also; for this purpose I have come.” Jesus had come to announce the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. He probably realized in prayer that morning how urgent the task was for him to accomplish the mission the Father had given him. He probably grasped as well that the people were coming him not so much to receive what he most wanted to give them, but to obtain from him what they themselves wanted. The crowds looked at him as a wonder-worker, as a powerful exorcist and a shockingly inexpensive and unbelievably effective physician. But Jesus had a different set of priorities than the crowds. He wanted them to accept him on his own terms, not theirs. He wanted them to come to him not principally as the doctor of their mortal bodies, but as the Savior of their immortal souls.
• Jesus’ priorities get us to focus, first, on ours with regard to him. Do we hunger for what he wants to give us or for what we want him to give us? Do we seek to accord our priorities with His, or His with ours? It’s still common today that many people, like those in today’s Gospel, come to the Lord mostly as a miracle worker, as a benefactor who can pull strings to get us out of a jam, as a powerful friend who can provide a quick fix to a problem we’re facing. Jesus, however, wants more. As he said in the Gospel, the reason he came from heaven to earth was to proclaim the message of the kingdom and to proclaim it in such a way that it won’t fall on deaf ears, that it won’t be ignored, but embraced, followed and lived with joy. He wants us to respond to his proclamation of the kingdom with the same type of life-changing faith that we see in Mary and the apostles. That’s his priority.
• Many of us, let’s be honest, might believe that Jesus has his priorities mixed up. After all, imagine how full our Churches would be if Jesus, through parish priests or through one of the parishioners, was working tremendous miracles of healing. The dramatic exorcisms would bring national and international media attention. All those with cancer, or paralysis, or back-pain, or emotional scars could come to the Church and leave completely healed. Probably it would also bring some of the criminals and drug dealers who, in seeing this incredible divine power working through human instruments, might be brought to conversion. But that’s not the way Jesus chooses to do it. Instead, he fundamentally sends priests ordained in his person and the whole Church with them to preach the Gospel of the kingdom. From Jesus’ own divine perspective, the greatest gift he can give any of us, whether we’re ill and suffering or healthy, is his holy word! Jesus wants us most to listen to his preaching, to embrace his word, and in consuming the Word-made-flesh in the Eucharist, to become so one with the word that we become living commentaries of life in the kingdom. In doing so, he’s not ignoring all our ills and problems, but trying to address them at their root. All of these sufferings and difficulties are symptoms of the same essential cancer: the cancer of sin. Physical pain comes as a result of the first sin of our parents at the fall. Our emotional pain and many of our illnesses come from the wounds that our sins and others’ have caused. Jesus isn’t ducking any of these difficulties, but in his divine omniscience is trying to lead us to what is the ultimate cure for them all.
• We see Jesus’ priorities at work in the lives of his first apostles. The first time Jesus sent them out, he gave them instructions first to preach that the kingdom is among them, and then to cure (Mt 10:7-8). In the time of the early Church, the apostles recognized that, because their first duty was to “prayer” and the “ministry of the word,” imitating Jesus’ prayer and his proclamation in Sunday’s Gospel. Since they no longer had the time for other good works of charity, which are too essential to be neglected, they ordained seven deacons (Acts 6:3-4). St. Paul even gave up baptizing — which others could do — so that he could travel more to preach: “For Christ did not send me to baptize,” he said, “ but to proclaim the gospel” (1 Cor 1:17). In this Sunday’s second reading, he’ll say, “Woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel!” You may be surprised to discover that the fathers of the Second Vatican Council, in their document on the priesthood, said that “it is the first duty of priests… to preach the Gospel of God to all men” (Presbyterorum Ordinis, 4). Preaching is a more important duty than even the celebration of the sacraments because our practice of the sacraments is dependent upon having our faith in them aroused by the word of God.
• Each of us has a great lesson to learn in this. God wants more from us than just to pray, as Jesus did very early in the morning. He wants more from us than merely to care for those who are ill, loving them and trying to help them according to our capacities, just like Jesus did according to his. He also wants us, having heard the saving words of the Gospel, to spread them, to bring this good news of salvation to others. Pope Francis asked in his exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel, “If we have received the love that restores meaning to our lives, how can we fail to share that love with others? …What kind of love would not feel the need to speak of the beloved, to point him out, to make him known?” Because we are convinced of the difference Jesus makes, we must evangelize, we must go to those who haven’t yet heard or embraced this proclamation of the kingdom and propose it to them. We know how our culture much needs this proclamation. We know how much various family members and friends do.
• Two-thousand years ago, at the end of the day in his life that we observe in this Sunday’s scene in the Gospel, Jesus left those who were seeking him in order to go to other villages to preach the Gospel of the kingdom. After his Ascension, he has changed his method of operation. He no longer leaves to go to other neighborhoods or cities, but instead stays in the tabernacle and wants to send us, like his first followers, to the other villages. He does this not so that he can have a well-earned eternal vacation, but because he loves us, and he realizes that the greatest gift he could give any of us is the vocation to share in his mission of the proclamation of the kingdom for the salvation of the world. So let us go to the nearby houses, streets and villages. Everyone is still looking for Jesus, even if they don’t really know it. Let’s do what we can to bring Jesus to them and them to Jesus. For this reason he came. For this reason he has sent us the Holy Spirit on Pentecost and at our Confirmation. For this reason he ultimately created us.

The Gospel on which the brief homily was based was: 

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