Hebrews 6:10-20 / Mark 2:23-28
Take heart; God will not forget your work and love.
A hospital doctor used to prescribe “memory breaks” for his patients. Before leaving a room, he’d say, “I’ve one more important prescription for you. I want you to take a ‘memory break’: one at ten o’clock and another at four o’clock. “Close your eyes. Relax your body.
Then recall three happy times from your past. Spend as much time as you can reliving each happy event.” The doctor knew what he was doing. “Memory breaks” are healing experiences. Today’s reading assures us that God will someday take a similar “memory break” with us. He will recall the good things we did in life. And that too will be a healing experience.****
Do we ever take “memory breaks” when we need a spiritual lift?
“God gives us memory so that we can have roses in December.”
James Matthew Barrie
****
Our firm hope, the anchor of our faith, is that God made Jesus our high priest according to the order of Melchizedek, a statement rather obscure for us, which Paul will explain further. In any case, our faith is based on the word of God and of Christ.
The function of laws is to order relationships within the community so as to safeguard the rights of God and of the people around us, and to make us aware of our social responsibilities. Yet experience tells us that it is a perpetual human temptation to turn laws into absolutes, to make people servants of the law rather than the law a servant of people. Jesus reminds us of the priority of people and the human community over the letter of the law.
****
One of the reasons why some people do not wish to embrace a religion is because of the obligations to the laws and practices of the religion. In as much as they may believe in a supreme divine being, they prefer to remain as "free-thinkers" - free from religious obligations, and perhaps, moral obligations. And we ourselves may at times find our religious obligations and laws rather cumbersome and inconvenient, and we may even think that some are like a nuisance.
But laws and obligations have a purpose. They are meant to help those who need black-and-white instructions to what needs to be done and what needs to be observed. More than that, they also help us know where we are in our spiritual life, and to find a direction in our relationship with God. Hence we must remember that our God is not a God of laws and commandments and obligations.
He is a God of relationships, and Jesus is the expression of that relationship. And if Jesus is the master of the Sabbath, which is a holy day, then He is leading us into a holy relationship with God and with each other. It is in this holy relationship that we will understand the laws and commandments and obligations. Over and above, let us be holy, just as our Lord God is holy.
****
Opening Prayer: Lord our God, it is easier for us to seek safety in observing laws and customs than to be personally responsible for the people around us and to serve you with the freedom of love. Give us a bit of your own fantasy, send us the Holy Spirit to fill us with your own inventive and creative love, that we may ever seek new ways to reach out to you and to one another. Grant this through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
***
Saint Agnes
Feast day January 21
“A new kind of martyrdom!” exclaimed St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan. The assembly cheered and applauded. He was celebrating St. Agnes because she was a virgin, a martyr—and a child. She was executed at Rome in 304 during the Emperor Diocletian’s vicious persecution. Here are Ambrose’s observations on her death:
St. Agnes is said to have suffered martyrdom at age 12. The cruelty that did not spare so young a child was hateful, but the power of faith in the child was greater. Was there room for a wound in that small body? The sword could barely strike her, yet she had the inner strength to strike back. Girls of her age usually can’t even bear a parent’s angry glance. They cry at needles’ pricks as though they were wounds. Agnes, however, faced her persecutors fearlessly. When they attempted to force her to worship at the pagan altars, she stretched out her hands and made the sign of the cross over the sacrificial fires. She was not fazed by the heavy weight of the chains they wrapped around her. And she freely offered her body to the executioner’s sword.
The executioner used both threats and allurements to try to change her mind. He encouraged young men to beg her to marry them. But she answered, “I already have a spouse, and I will not offend him by pretending that another might please me. I will give myself only to him who first chose me. So, executioner, what are you waiting for? Destroy this body that unwanted eyes desire.”
Agnes stood and prayed. Then she bent down her neck. The executioner trembled as though he himself had been condemned. His right hand shook and his face grew pale, but the virgin showed no fear at all.
So in one victim we have a twofold martyrdom of purity and faith, for Agnes both remained a virgin and also obtained martyrdom. Historians say that legends have embroidered the few facts we know about Agnes. But the stories are rooted in actual events and convey kernels of truth about her. These legends tell that Agnes was a beautiful and soon-to-be-marriageable young woman. Many eager young men pursued her, but she rebuffed them because she had consecrated her virginity to Christ.
One spurned suitor took revenge by reporting to the authorities that Agnes was a Christian. She was brought before a judge who tried to persuade her to recant. He threatened her with fire and torture, but she did not flinch. Then he had her stripped at a brothel and urged young men to seduce her. “You may stain your sword with my blood,” she said, “but you will never profane my body that I have consecrated to Christ.” All were so stunned by her presence that only one boy tried to touch her. Legend says he was struck blind, and that Agnes healed him.
Exasperated and egged on by her first accuser, the governor ordered her execution. Agnes was taken to the Stadium of Domitian, where she courageously faced a nervous soldier who hacked her to death with his sword. Over the centuries the little virgin martyr became one of the most popular saints in Christian history.
St. Agnes’s death was “a new kind of martyrdom!” She taught us adults the meaning of valor while she was still a child. Agnes hurried to the place of her execution more joyfully than a bride goes to her wedding. And she was adorned not with plaited hair, but with Christ himself.
