The Holy Woe to Preach the Gospel, Fifth Sunday (B), February 4, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
February 4, 2024
Job 7:1-4.6-7, Ps 147, 1 Cor 9:16-19.22-23, Mk 1:29-39

To listen to an audio recoding of today’s homily: 

The text that guided tonight’s homily was: 

• Over the course of the last few weeks, as we have entered into Ordinary Time and pondered the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry in St. Mark’s Gospel, we have been hearing a great deal about the importance of the Word of God, hearing it, putting it into practice, and sharing it. Two weeks ago, the Church celebrated the Sunday of the Word of God in which we focused on Jonah’s successful preaching of conversion to the pagan Ninevites and on Jesus’ first homily, in which he proclaimed that since the long-awaited Kingdom of God was at hand, it was time to repent and believe in the Gospel. We saw how Peter, Andrew, James and John acted on those words of conversion and faith, left their boats, fish, families and homes to follow Jesus when he called, and began the preparation to be sent out by him as fishers of men. Last Sunday we met Jesus in the Capernaum synagogue where he amazed and astonished those present by the authority with which he preached, and we spoke about how each of us is meant to be just as amazed by Jesus’ words, to open our hearts to it, to love it, and to recognize how the devil seeks to prevent its growth in our life.
• Tonight for the third week in a row, we encounter powerful words about the importance of the Word of God, and, especially, about sharing it. We do so in the midst of what might be called “an ordinary day in the public ministry of Jesus,” in which are able to observe Jesus curing the sick and possessed, praying, and then speaking about the importance of preaching. The Church has always sought to live her days filled with the same three actions. Each of us, as disciples of Jesus, are similarly supposed to be people of charity, who seek to love others as Christ has loved us; of prayer, both personal and liturgical; and of mission, going to the who world and sharing the Gospel with everyone God has created, teaching them to carry out everything he has taught. And so let us enter into today’s readings, focus a little on the first two crucially important aspects of the Christian life and then spend most of our time on the third, to which, as we see in the Gospel, Jesus gives clear priority.
• Let’s begin with the loving care of the sick. In tonight’s first reading, Job is tossing and turning at night, complaining about the “months of misery and troubled nights.” By this point, he had lost most of the members of his family, all his livestock, even his own health, and as he lay with boils all over his skin, the emotional pain overwhelmed him. “Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery?,” he cried aloud. His nights were “filled with restlessness” and his days seemed to be coming “to an end without hope” and he believed he would “not see happiness again.” God would soon come to his aid, for as we sang in the Psalm, God “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”
• When God came in the flesh, he showed how important it was for him to bind up the wounds of those whose hearts and bodies were broken. In today’s Gospel, we see that Simon Peter’s mother-in-law had a bad fever, and Jesus wasted no time in curing her. Then, after sundown, St. Mark informs us, the residents of Capernaum brought to Jesus “all who were ill or possessed by demons,” such that the “whole town was gathered around the door.” Jesus work of healing the sick and casting out demons was doubtless very grueling, 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. If you’ve seen the series The Chosen, one of the most enduring lessons from the end of Season Two was after a day in which Jesus, played by Jonathan Roumie, cured the vast multitudes of the sick one-by-one. He returned thoroughly exhausted and needed to collapse. Because Jesus began only after Sunday, it was probably close to midnight by the time he finished.
• Yet, despite his fatigue, he arose the next morning, “very early before dawn,” which in the Greek means likely about three or four in the morning, and went to a deserted place to pray. Here Jesus shows us about the importance of prayer. If he who was God prioritized prayer to his Father more than well-earned and much-needed sleep, what does that say about the priority you and I, who are not God, should give to prayer? Most days, of course, there does not need to be competition between getting enough sleep, making time for prayer, and then doing our studies and work. But Jesus shows that when there is a conflict between time for prayer and time for sleep, we should cut down on sleep and make time for God. Otherwise, if we were to treat sleep as more important than prayer, we would essentially be making sleep a god, and prioritizing the needs of the body over the greater needs of our soul. The truth is, as we get older, sometimes, on really busy days, the early morning might be the only time we have to pray. Many parents with young children find that the only time they have a chance to pray without interruption is before their kids get up. Many others — including students, priests, religious — have discovered that it is the most focused time to pray, before all of the hustle-and-bustle of daily life intervenes. Jesus, in today’s Gospel, shows that prayer is worth the sacrifice. If we’d get up to care for a crying infant, or to catch an early morning flight, or to study for an exam, then we can certainly get up out of love for God.
• Mark tells us that, while Jesus was praying, Simon and the others were awakened, likely by hordes of the sick, the possessed, and their friends and family members arriving at dawn hoping for a sequel of what they had witnessed the night before, and went about looking for Jesus. When they found him, they said, “Everyone is looking for you.” We might have expected that Jesus’ response to be one of jubilation. After all, wouldn’t he 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. Jesus, however, when told that everyone was trying to hunt him down, 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 above all to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. He probably realized in prayer that early morning how urgent it was for him to accomplish the mission the Father had given him. He probably grasped as well that many people were coming him not so much to receive what he wanted to give them, but to obtain from him what they themselves wanted to receive. Many in the crowds doubtless looked at him as a wonderworker, a powerful exorcist and an unbelievably effective and shockingly free 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. He wanted them to hear, live and share the Gospel of the Kingdom.
• We see a similar shifting of priorities by Jesus at work throughout the Gospel. After he had fed the 5,000 families with five loaves and two fish, the crowds walked several miles along the northern edge of the Sea of Galilee to be with him. Upon disembarking, when Jesus saw the crowds, he said to them with great candor: “Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.” (Jn 6:26). They were looking more for a baker giving out a free meal than a savior! It was far more important for Jesus to feed their soul than their stomachs. Jesus again showed what his real priorities were when friends brought him a paralyzed man and lowered him on top of his head after removing part of a house’s roof. They obviously wanted Jesus to cure their friend and help him walk anew. But when Jesus saw the faith of the friends, he turned to the paralyzed man and said, not, “I cure you. Stand up, take up your mat and go home,” but rather, “My son, your sins are forgiven” (Mk 2:5). It was far more important for Jesus to cure his soul than his paralysis. It was only to silence those were criticizing him for pretending to be God who alone can forgive sins that Jesus, to show his authority, healed the man’s paralysis.
• What do we see? Jesus worked all of his miracles, not because he had come down from heaven to earth to establish an emergency room, but to give divine authentication to the words that he was teaching and to move from physical food and physical cures to the more important spiritual nutrition and healings he knew people needed far more urgently. The miracles were the dramatic exclamation points to everything he was teaching, and a demonstration that the kingdom he was proclaiming was real and among them. Pope Francis said in a homily early in his pontificate, “When Jesus healed a sick man, he was not only a healer. When he taught people … he was not only a catechist, a preacher of morals. When he remonstrated against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and Sadducees, he was not a revolutionary who wanted to drive out the Romans. No, these things that Jesus did — healing, teaching and speaking out against hypocrisy — were only a sign of something greater that Jesus was doing: he was forgiving sins.” Reconciling the world in Christ in the name of the Father, Pope Francis continued, “this is Jesus’ mission. Everything else — healing, teaching, reprimands — are only signs of that deeper miracle which is the re-creation of the world. Thus, reconciliation is the re-creation of the world; and the most profound mission of Jesus is the redemption of all of us sinners.” Jesus had come to reconcile us to the Father through helping us repent and believe, through cleansing and feeding us, through helping us to live in his image and likeness and help us become co-redeemers helping others to learn how to live through, with and in him, too.
• Tonight all of us have come to Mass, but it’s important for us to examine honestly why we’ve come. Have we come here hungering for whatJesus wants to give us or for what we want him to give us? Are we here trying to accord our priorities with His, or His with ours? It’s still common today that many Catholics, like those in today’s Gospel, come to the Lord mostly as a miracle worker, as a powerful friend who can pull strings to get us out of a jam. Jesus, however, wants more, and wants more because he loves us and wants us to experience the fullness of life. As he said in tonight’s 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 wouldn’t fall on deaf ears and be ignored, but rather 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. That’s why he came into the world. That’s why he has called us to be Christians.
• Many people today might accuse Jesus of having his priorities mixed up. After all, imagine how full our churches would be if Jesus, through his priests, or missionaries, lay people or students, were working tremendous miracles of healing. We could depopulate the local hospitals and bring everyone before the altar. People would come from all over the city, state, country and world to be cured. The dramatic exorcisms would bring national and international media attention. All those with cancer, or paralysis, or back-pain, or emotional scars would leave completely healed. Probably criminals and drug dealers, in seeing this incredible divine power working through human instruments, might be brought to mass conversion. But this is not the way Jesus has chosen for his Church to operate. Instead, he fundamentally sends us all 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, and he wants us to share that same treasure with others. Jesus wants us who come into his presence most of all 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 his 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 the wounds that others’ sins and our sins have caused. Jesus isn’t ducking any of these hardships, but in his divine omniscience is trying to lead us to what is the definitive cure for them all.
• We see Jesus’ priorities at work in the lives of his first apostles. They stressed that the proclamation of the kingdom was paramount. 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 early Church, the apostles recognized this precedence, stating clearly that their first duty was to “prayer” and the “ministry of the word,” imitating Jesus’ prayer and his proclamation in today’s Gospel. Since they no longer had the time for organized works of charity, which are always too essential to be neglected, the apostles ordained seven deacons to make sure they got done (Acts 6:3-4). St. Paul even gave up baptizing — which others could do — so that he could travel more to preach God’s saving word: “For Christ did not send me to baptize,” he said, “but to proclaim the Gospel” (1 Cor 1:17). Some 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 receiving the graces of the sacraments is dependent upon having our faith in them aroused. Faith comes, as St. Paul said, “through hearing” (Rom 10:17) and others can hear only if there’s first someone to proclaim. That’s why it’s such a problem in some places when clergy preach poorly, with no passion, as if they’re coming up with something to say on the fly. That’s why it’s similarly a problem when, for example, at daily Mass, some priests don’t even give a homily or give one without any prayer or preparation. Pope Francis is clear that, in Mass, a homily is part of the offering given to God, and it’s super important for priests and faithful both to ponder the word of God if we’re going to make the transition from hearing Jesus speak to us in the Gospel to hearing him say, through the same priests, “This is my Body” and “This is the chalice of my blood.”
• Paul, in today’s second reading, described the importance of preaching in his own life as a disciple and apostle of Jesus Christ. He cried out to the Christians in Corinth, “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel.” He felt an inner compulsion to share the Gospel he had received. Woe means misery, sorrow, distress, sadness, heartache, grief, anguish, affliction. He felt all of these things. Woe is the antonym of happiness and joy. He was saying that he couldn’t be happy unless he were sharing the Gospel. That’s what led him to spend his entire adult life after his conversion crisscrossing the then known world proclaiming it, despite enormous distances and dangerous pathways on foot and on seas, despite multiple imprisonments, beatings, scourgings, stoning, shipwrecks, imprisonments, betrayals, rejections and organized plots against his life (2 Cor 11:23-29). As he wrote today, he became all things to all people in order to save as many as he could and was willing to risk, spend and give his life to proclaim the Word of God, because he knew that the Gospel was the path of salvation and loved others enough to dedicate his life to sharing it.
• Each of us has a great lesson to learn in this. As important as prayer is, something that Jesus got up on short rest to do very early in the morning, God wants more from us than just to pray. As crucial as loving our neighbor is and imitating Jesus as the Good Samaritan, Jesus wants more from us than merely to care for with love, and cure if possible through medicine or prayer, those who are ill. He also wants us, having heard the saving words of the Gospel, to spread them, to bring this good news of salvation to others. He wants us to be under than same inner compulsion as St. Paul was, because if we’re not, then we don’t really appreciate ourselves what the Gospel is.
• Jesus’ as the purpose for Jesus’ coming was to proclaim the kingdom, so St. Paul’s great passion was to spread the faith. Do we feel the apostle’s inner desperation that led him to say, “Woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel?” Is that the great yearning of our life, even now on campus? In his programmatic apostolic exhortation The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis tried to arouse in every Christian the yearning to share the faith. He asked, “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?” He said that we Christians are “convinced from personal experience that it is not the same thing to have known Jesus as not to have known him, not the same thing to walk with him as to walk blindly, not the same thing to hear his word as not to know it, and not the same thing to contemplate him, to worship him, to find our peace in him, as not to. It is not the same thing to try to build the world with his Gospel as to try to do so by our own lights. We know well that with Jesus life becomes richer and that with him it is easier to find meaning in everything. This is why we evangelize.” Because we are convinced of the incredible difference Jesus makes, we cannot but evangelize, we must go to those who haven’t yet heard or embrace this proclamation of the kingdom and propose it to them, we must feel that inner woe, that interior sense that we’re going to explode, unless we share the faith. That’s what impelled St. Paul to “become all things to all, to save at least some.” He did this — making himself “a slave to all to win over as many as possible” — for the “sake of the Gospel, so that I, too, may have a share in it.” He grasped that if he wasn’t sharing the faith, he wouldn’t really have a share in the Gospel. If we’ve really grasped what the Gospel is, we can’t keep it to ourselves. And if we’re not sharing it, then we are not living it.
• I’ve long felt this inner woe. It’s one of the reasons that God used to reveal to me a vocation to serve him and you as a priest. It’s one of the reasons why I travel most Saturdays and during most of my vacations to preach retreats for priests, religious, seminarians, or parishes, and teach at conferences. It’s why I get up very early before dawn to write articles for the National Catholic Register and other publications. It’s one of the reasons why I preach each day rather long homilies. There’s an old quip about preachers that some have to say something and others have something to say. I believe I have something to say, namely, the Gospel of Jesus, the Gospel he himself proclaimed, the Gospel St. Paul proclaimed, and the Gospel the Church has been sharing since the foundation of the world. I hope that each of you, too, will feel that inner woe unless you share the same faith, the same hope, the same love, the same life, the same light.
• Why have we come to Jesus tonight? Jesus knows that we have come with our various illnesses, needs and problems. He can cure us and he wants us to ask him with confidence to do so. But he doesn’t want these difficulties to distract us from an even more important gift he wants to give us today: his word. And what does Jesus want us to do with the gift of his word? Two-thousand years ago, 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 won’t leave us today early in the morning to go to other neighborhoods, campuses, boroughs or cities. Instead, he will stay here in the tabernacle praying and wants to send us to the other places, just like he eventually did his first disciples and apostles. He does this not so that he can have a well-earned vacation, but because he loves us, and 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. This is why Jesus has come here today. Let’s ask for the grace to align our priorities to his.

When it was evening, after sunset,
they brought to him all who were ill or possessed by demons.
The whole town was gathered at the door.
He cured many who were sick with various diseases,
and he drove out many demons,
not permitting them to speak because they knew him.

Rising very early before dawn, he left
and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.
Simon and those who were with him pursued him
and on finding him said, “Everyone is looking for you.”
He told them, “Let us go on to the nearby villages
that I may preach there also.
For this purpose have I come.”
So he went into their synagogues,
preaching and driving out demons throughout the whole of Galilee.

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