January 20, 2010; Homily, January 23, 2010.

Mark 3:20-21.

Jesus came with his disciples into the house. Again, the crowd gathered, making it impossible for them even to eat. When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him, for they said, "He is out of his mind."

The Gospel of the Lord.

They said Jesus was "out of his mind". In effect they called Jesus "crazy". Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. Think for yourself. If you are right, have the courage of your conviction, and stick with it, no matter what you are called. Yes, we may be persuaded by logic, but never by mere name-calling.

The point of Mark's Gospel is set forth in its first words, "The gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." The point of Mark's Gospel is that Jesus was the Son of God. Mark proves that point by what Jesus did, his miracles ending in his Passion, death and resurrection and by what He said.

God does not see as man sees, for man judges by appearances but God looks within.

"He is out of his mind." The word "He" is a pronoun which in Greek can mean either "he", "she" or "it" depending on context. The Gospel translators said the Greek pronoun meant "he" but in fact it makes more sense to translate the pronoun as meaning "it", in that "It [the crowd, not 'He" Jesus] is out of its [not his] mind."

I knew a man who had spent some time in a psychiatric hospital. On his discharge he went drinking with a few of his old friends. When a argument arose among them, one of them dismissed some opinion of his by saying he was only a madman anyway. “On the contrary,” he replied, “I’m the only man here who can prove that he’s sane!” “Prove it then!” they challenged. He invited bets, and when he had secured bets of several pints of Guinness he put his hand in his pocket and drew out the certificate of discharge from the psychiatric hospital. It stated there in black and white that he was sane! Who is sane and who is mad? Today’s reading is ambiguous, though the translations all say that it was Jesus who was mad. But a scholar noted that the Greek could also be translated, “they (the family) set about controlling it (the crowd) because it was beside itself.” (In Greek the word for ‘he’ and the word ‘it’ are the same in this case.) Was Jesus mad, or was the crowd mad? But what’s the difference? The contrast between them is the same whether Jesus is described as mad and the crowd as sane, or Jesus is described as sane and the crowd as mad. But look at who’s calling Jesus mad. The crowd – the same people who once said to him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a devil?” (John 8:48). So you have a choice: do you want to identify with the crowd calling Jesus mad, or with Jesus calling the crowd mad? Who do you believe in your heart of hearts? What is madness but a definition by some group who are probably madder themselves? In the 4th century, Abba Antony, the founder of monasticism, said: “A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, ‘You are mad, you are not like us.’”

January 18, 2010; Homily January 19, 2010.

Mark 3:23-28.

As Jesus was passing through a field of grain on the sabbath, his disciples began to make a path while picking the heads of grain. At this the Pharisees said to him, "Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?" He said to them,, "Have you not read what David did when he was in need and he and his companions were hungry? How he went into the house of God when Abiathar was high priest and ate the bread of offering that only the priest could lawfully eat and shared it with his companions?" Then he said to them, "The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. That is why the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath."
The Gospel of the Lord.

The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.

Abiathar: Ahimelech

when David ate the show bread and shared it with his men.

reaping: plucking or picking the heads of grain, harvesting
gleaning: act of collecting left over crops from harvested fields
threshing: loosening the edible grain from chaff
winnowing: separating the grain from loosened chaff

primogeniture.

January 11, 2010. Homily, January 12, 2010.

Mark 1:21-28

Jesus came to Capernaum with his followers, and on the sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught. The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as as one having authority and not as the scribes. In their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit; he cried out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are- the Holy One of God!" Jesus rebuked him and said, "Quiet! Come out of him!" The unclean spirit convulsed him and with a loud cry came out of him. All were amazed and asked one another, "What is this? A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him." His fame spread everywhere throughout the whole region of Galilee.

The Gospel of the Lord.

center - the Holy One of God

1 cried out with a loud cry

2 astonished amazed

3 taught as one having authority teaching with authority

4 entered the synagogue and taught fame spread throughout

Mark 1:1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

January 3, 2010. Homily, January 9, 2010.

John 3, 22-30.

Jesus and His disciples went into the region of Judea, where he spent some time with them baptizing. John was also baptizing in Aenon near Salim, because there was an abundance of water there, and people came to be baptized, for John had not yet been imprisoned. Now a dispute arose between the disciples of John and a Jew bout ceremonial washings. So they came to John and said to him, "Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you testified, here he is baptizing and everyone is coming to him." John answered and said, "No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said that I am not the Christ, but that I was sent before him. The one who has the bride is the bridegroom; the best man who stands and listens for him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. So this joy of mine has been made complete. He must increase; I must decrease."

The Gospel of the Lord.

John’s gospel makes the ministries of Jesus and John the Baptist overlap, while Mark says (1:14) that it was only after John had been put in prison that Jesus began his own ministry. John’s gospel may have wanted to put them together in order to contrast them. “No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven” (v. 27). In another translation it says: “One can lay claim only to what is given by God.” This is something you could spend days thinking about – or perhaps a lifetime. We generally lay claim only to things we believe we have achieved by our own effort. Everything else we call luck, or chance...or ‘providence’. But this reading suggests that the things most distinctively my own are the purest gift of God; the more they are mine the more they are God's, the more they are God's the more they are mine. If a person’s work is to live, it must come from the depths of him – not from alien sources outside himself – but from within.” "[T]he best man who stands and listens for him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. So this joy of mine has been made complete." Elizabeth to Mary at the Visitation, "When the infant in my womb heard your voice, he leaped for joy." When the priest, or the deacon, mixes the water and the wine, he says, "By the mixing of this water and wine, we join in your divinity as you have joined in our humanity."