Monday March 21, 2022

Monday of 3rd Week in Lent

 

Salvation for Pagans

Today’s liturgy thinks especially of converts who are baptized and immersed into the baptismal water. Are conversion and missionary action still valid? Why be concerned about unknown, distant peoples? – Elisha cured the pagan officer from Damascus, Syria, and the man found both healing and faith. Jesus, not accepted as a prophet in his own town, says that salvation will be offered to pagans. That doesn’t mean that the missionary will not be always understood and welcomed in the missions…

 

First Reading: 2 Kings 5:1-15 

Naaman was general of the army under the king of Aram. He was important to his master, who held him in the highest esteem because it was by him that God had given victory to Aram: a truly great man, but afflicted with a grievous skin disease. It so happened that Aram, on one of its raiding expeditions against Israel, captured a young girl who became a maid to Naaman’s wife. One day she said to her mistress, “Oh, if only my master could meet the prophet of Samaria, he would be healed of his skin disease.”

Naaman went straight to his master and reported what the girl from Israel had said.

 “Well then, go,” said the king of Aram. “And I’ll send a letter of introduction to the king of Israel.”

So he went off, taking with him about 750 pounds of silver, 150 pounds of gold, and ten sets of clothes.

 Naaman delivered the letter to the king of Israel. The letter read, “When you get this letter, you’ll know that I’ve personally sent my servant Naaman to you; heal him of his skin disease.”

When the king of Israel read the letter, he was terribly upset, ripping his robe to pieces. He said, “Am I a god with the power to bring death or life that I get orders to heal this man from his disease? What’s going on here? That king’s trying to pick a fight, that’s what!”

 Elisha the man of God heard what had happened, that the king of Israel was so distressed that he’d ripped his robe to shreds. He sent word to the king, “Why are you so upset, ripping your robe like this? Send him to me so he’ll learn that there’s a prophet in Israel.”

 So Naaman with his horses and chariots arrived in style and stopped at Elisha’s door.

 Elisha sent out a servant to meet him with this message: “Go to the River Jordan and immerse yourself seven times. Your skin will be healed and you’ll be as good as new.”

Naaman lost his temper. He turned on his heel saying, “I thought he’d personally come out and meet me, call on the name of God, wave his hand over the diseased spot, and get rid of the disease. The Damascus rivers, Abana and Pharpar, are cleaner by far than any of the rivers in Israel. Why not bathe in them? I’d at least get clean.” He stomped off, mad as a hornet.

 But his servants caught up with him and said, “Father, if the prophet had asked you to do something hard and heroic, wouldn’t you have done it? So why not this simple ‘wash and be clean’?”

So he did it. He went down and immersed himself in the Jordan seven times, following the orders of the Holy Man. His skin was healed; it was like the skin of a little baby. He was as good as new.

He then went back to the Holy Man, he and his entourage, stood before him, and said, “I now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no God anywhere on earth other than the God of Israel. In gratitude let me give you a gift.”

 

Gospel: Luke 4:24-30 

He answered, “I suppose you’re going to quote the proverb, ‘Doctor, go heal yourself. Do here in your hometown what we heard you did in Capernaum.’ Well, let me tell you something: No prophet is ever welcomed in his hometown. Isn’t it a fact that there were many widows in Israel at the time of Elijah during that three and a half years of drought when famine devastated the land, but the only widow to whom Elijah was sent was in Sarepta in Sidon? And there were many lepers in Israel at the time of the prophet Elisha but the only one cleansed was Naaman the Syrian.”

That set everyone in the meeting place seething with anger. They threw him out, banishing him from the village, then took him to a mountain cliff at the edge of the village to throw him to his doom, but he gave them the slip and was on his way.

 

Prayer

Lord God, our Father,
you want all people to be saved
through faith in Jesus Christ, your Son.
May Christians not practice
spiritual selfishness and clannishness
but may their faith mean so much to them
that they want to share it with others,
that your Son may be known and loved everywhere,
for he is the Lord of all for ever. Amen.

 

Reflection:

How do you manage to live as Christian, yet not persecuted?

What had irritated the assembly in Nazareth were the words of ‘grace’ of Jesus. And the villagers – their village heads expelled Jesus from their village. The word ‘village’ in the Gospels always had a negative connotation. The people of a village remained closed-minded, attached to their traditions, not wanting to change and the villagers remained resistant.

That’s why when the evangelist Mark narrates Jesus healing the deaf and dumb man in 7:31, Jesus took him away from the people. To open the ears to help him listen something new and to help him to speak in a new way, it was necessary to guide him away, take him out from the noise of the crowd. And when Jesus healed the blind man from Bethsaida in Mark 8:22, he repeats the action, takes him out of town and helps him see the world in a new way. After healing him, Jesus tells him not to go back to the village. If you go back to your old ways, , you are returning to your blindness.

Jesus and his message were rejected because the people could not take criticisms. As announcers of the Gospel, if what had happened to Jesus does not happen to us, we should ask ourselves: Did I preach the authentic Gospel or I just sought to say what people expected, what they liked to hear? Sometimes it is misunderstood that a capable evangelizer is one who does not provoke, the one who does not disturb, the one who says what people like to hear, and does things that have always been done…

But, the aim of an evangelizer is not to please people, nor to speak what people expect him to speak but to announce the Word of Christ. Do we experience resistance to changes from certain traditions that have little or nothing to do with faith in Christ? In our Church communities, that is what the people would love to observe and practice. That is why we come across some very good Catholics, who but reject the teachings and life of Pope Francis as heretical.

Jesus did not dilute his message to win the sympathy of the people of his hometown. The Gospel must be announced in its authenticity, it can be received or rejected, but not modified.

One day two bishops met. One of them lived in a place where Christians were persecuted, and his colleague asked him: How do you live as a Christian in a place where you are persecuted? The bishop was a little pensive and then goes to his colleague and says: ‘What I do not understand is how you manage to live as a Christian without being persecuted?’

 

Video available on Youtube: How do you manage to live as Christian, yet not persecuted?