FOR THE SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME 10th /11th February 2024

Dear Parishioners,

Today’s Gospel gives us key points on the new relationship with God that Jesus
brings to us. We know that Jesus marked a ‘before and after’ in history. He is
the beginning of a New Era, a new way of being, a new understanding and living
our relationship with God.

The Gospel passage expresses in few lines that in Jesus, God is very close to us. He makes himself accessible to all. He listens to all, not only the ‘goody-goodies’, the ones who are successful, the ones who are ‘holy’ but to everyone. In that time, illness was not understood; there was the primitive belief that perhaps people got ill because they were sinful and so ill people were rejected, considered unclean, not worthy to be among others. When Jesus is approached by the leper, he does not avoid him, but Jesus welcomes and listens to the leper’s pleading for cure. Mark’s Gospel does not give many details of the circumstances but expresses to us the strong willingness of Jesus to cure that person, when he says, ‘Of course I want to cure you!’.

Jesus introduces us into a new relationship with God that is close, personal, and touches all our relationships with others. As Paul says in the 2nd reading, “…try to be helpful to everyone at all times, not anxious for my own advantage but for the advantage of everybody else”. The early church communities were made up of people from different cultures and ethnicities, just like our communities. Paul makes clear that whatever the culture, and we could add age, social position, ethnic background, we must treat each other with an attitude of service and love.

The Gospel passage expresses in few lines that in Jesus, God is very close to us. He makes himself accessible to all. He listens to all, not only the ‘goody-goodies’, the ones who are successful, the ones who are ‘holy’ but to everyone. In that time, illness was not understood; there was the primitive belief that perhaps people got ill because they were sinful and so ill people were rejected, considered unclean, not worthy to be among others. When Jesus is approached by the leper, he does not avoid him, but Jesus welcomes and listens to the leper’s pleading for cure. Mark’s Gospel does not give many details of the circumstances but expresses to us the strong willingness of Jesus to cure that person, when he says, ‘Of course I want to cure you!’.

Jesus introduces us into a new relationship with God that is close, personal, and touches all our relationships with others. As Paul says in the 2nd reading, “…try to be helpful to everyone at all times, not anxious for my own advantage but for the advantage of everybody else”. The early church communities were made up of people from different cultures and ethnicities, just like our communities. Paul makes clear that whatever the culture, and we could add age, social position, ethnic background, we must treat each other with an attitude of service and love.

We can learn so much about our relationship with God and how we can grow as people from these readings. 2024 has been declared by the Pope as the Year of Prayer, these readings give us a good example of how we can exercise and nourish our personal prayer journey with the Scriptures growing closer to God and to others.

We will start Lent this Wednesday. Prayer is one of the special ways that we are called to live Lent along with fasting and charity. So, this Lent 2024, let us respond the invitation to a closer relationship with God and allow him to lead us to better relationships among our people, doing what Jesus did to the leper: welcoming him without rejection and helping him with a sincere heart. Pope Francis in his Lent message says: “Lent is the season of grace in which the desert can become once more – in the words of the prophet Hosea – the place of our first love (cf. Hos 2:16-17). God shapes his people, he enables us to leave our slavery behind and experience a Passover from death to life. Like a bridegroom, the Lord draws us once more to himself, whispering words of love to our hearts.”