2nd Week, Saturday, Jan 22
2 Sam 1:1-4, 11-12, 17, 19, 23-27 / Mark 3:20-21
Jonathan is killed; David eulogized Jonathan and Saul.
A father told author John Powell about his son's death in an auto accident. He also told him how he composed a letter and slipped it under his son's body in the casket. An excerpt from the letter reads: “I never told you how much I loved you. I never told you what a large part of my heart you occupied. ... But now you are dead. ... So I am writing this note and hoping that God will tell one of his angels to read this to you. I want you to know of my love for you, and my sorrow that I never told you of that love.' (Will the Real Me Please Stand Up?)
Why is it that we must wait for people to die before we let them know how we feel about them?
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Is there someone we should express our feelings toward, but haven't done so for some reason? Jesus said, “I love you just as the Father loves me.” John 15:9
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A messenger comes to announce to David that King Saul and his Son Jonathan have died in battle and David mourns them deeply, even though Saul had sought David’s life.
The few verses of today’s Gospel tell us no more than that the crowd was so eager to hear Jesus’ message, that they left him and the disciples not even the time to eat.
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We are called Christians. There are many words that can be used to describe who we are and what we do as Christians. For e.g. we are to be loving and forgiving, generous and kind, merciful and compassionate, etc. One simple expression could be to say that we are "big-hearted" people. Big-hearted people also express love in a big-hearted way. We not only love our friends and those who are good to us. We also must rise above our selfishness that tends to make us hate those who hate us and to ignore those who ignore us.
In the 1st reading, we could see how David showed he was such a big-hearted person. He forgave Saul who had persecuted him for so many years. Not only did he lament in grief over the death of Saul, he also remembered Saul's good qualities and he also remembered the goodness and love that Johnathan had for him.
Jesus Himself preached and showed the bigness and greatness of love. But such bigness and greatness of love is not easily understood and accepted by others because they may have become numb to the selfishness and evil they see so often around them. Even the relatives of Jesus thought He was out of His mind. But what is foolishness and madness for the world is indeed the bigness and the greatness of love. That bigness and greatness is shown on the cross. It is in the cross we encounter the unfathomable bigness and greatness of God's love.
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Outliers
Today, we have the shortest gospel reading of the entire year, but one that speaks volumes about who we are! We all long to be special and extraordinary but cannot risk our securities and step beyond ourselves; and for the same reason, we simply cannot bear someone else doing so! Thus, we love to normalize everything and everyone around us, so as to feel good about ourselves. In other words, we hate outliers and cut them to size. A line from the movie Three Idiots captures this dynamic: “When our friends fail, we feel bad; when they succeed, we feel worse.” Jesus himself reminded his people that “no prophet is honored among his own people.” No wonder the relatives of Jesus could not bear his growing uniqueness and popularity and, hence, had to label him “out of mind.” How do we treat the outliers in our families, religious communities, our little worlds?
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Prayer
Our saving God, you have shown your people mercy in your Son, Jesus Christ. May we belong to him, that we may come to love him deeply and, in this way, know him as he is, and also know you as our Father. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen
