5TH SUNDAY: HOMILY IN ORDINARY TIME, YEAR B
THEME: WOE TO ME IF I DO NOT PREACH THE GOSPEL!
BY: Benedict Agbo (Rev Fr)
* Job 7: 1 – 7, 1 Cor 9: 16 – 23, Mk 1: 29 – 39.
A. PREAMBLE
We Catholics are often times accused of being so preoccupied with the after life that we seem not to pray sufficiently for the problems of this life. On the other hand, the Pentecostals are accused of being over occupied with prosperity matters and the concerns of this life that they seem to pray and work less for the life after. Well, as far as I know, Christianity is not a life negating religion. Jesus came that we may have life and have it abundantly, Jn 10: 10. He is the bread of life yet he is not a bakery man that is there just to feed the body but more for the soul, Jn 6: 27. Yet he wants us to come to him when we are burdened, Matt 11: 28. Insensitivity to human sufferings and sicknesses is not a patrimony of the Church.
Today’s readings encourage us to disturb Jesus with our problems. Ps 147: 3 says ‘Praise the Lord who heals the broken hearted’. James 5: 13 says ‘Anyone who is in trouble should pray… Anyone in good spirits should sing a psalm.. Anyone who is ill should call the elders of the Church (presbyteroi)’. Yes, ‘those who wait upon the Lord will have their strength renewed’, Is 40: 31.
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B. CONTENT ANALYSIS
Today’s readings tell us something about 4 people:
(1) Job – who was face to face with human sufferings but learnt how to trust God till the end.
(2) Jesus – who was never too tired to help people in need and healed them with a word of spiritual authority not with long incantations.
(3) The Disciples – who knew how to trouble Jesus with all their problems.
(4) Peter’s Mother in law – who was temporally made dysfunctional by ill health but as soon as Jesus cured her fever, she returned back to her service.
C. CONTEXUALIZATION
In Nigeria today, many people are suffering. Our Youths are living in hopelessness without jobs. Many marriages are in pains of poverty, infidelity, sicknesses, nervous breakdown, crime, bribery and corruption in our offices, terrorism in our cities, etc. Worse is the problem of insensitivity and selfishness of our leaders as they watch Nigeria gradually decimate into anarchy and doom. Like Jesus in today’s gospel, Fr George Abba says (in his past commentary on today’s reading in The Shepherd bulletin) we must move from the Church to the homes of those who were absent in the Church today for one reason or the other; (a) Ill health like Simon’s Mother in law
(b) Financial hardships like Job’s
(c) Spiritual and psychological sicknesses as we find in today’s gospel. He calls them ‘the uncomfortable home of the last hour that needs our ward round’.
D. CONCLUSION
St Paul says ‘Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel of Christ’ and carry it from the Church to the home, to the village, to my place of business, and even to the government of Nigeria. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is that good people do nothing when others suffer and Christians keep the gospel to themselves without making it functional.
Why are we too down spirited to tell Jesus about our worries, about our fevers, about our enemies, about those trying to Islamize us, about our failures in business. I enjoin you to pray like Jabez did in her condition of great need: ‘Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my coasts.. Keep me from harm and hurt! Happy Sunday dear friends!
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