Friday of the First Week in Ordinary Time
“I say to you, rise, pick up your mat, and go home.” He didn’t say, rise, pick up your mat, and go celebrate, or even go tell everyone what I have done for you. No, he simply told the man who had been paralyzed for how long we don’t know to “rise, pick up your mat, and go home.” And he did. The gospel passage from Mark (2:1-12) tells us that the man whose name we do not know, “rose, picked up his mat at once, and went away in the sight of everyone.” And we read that it was so crowded in the home where Jesus was preaching that there wasn’t even room around the door to get in. Which is why this man’s friends, or maybe neighbors, broke through the roof to lower him who couldn’t walk into the room to get closer to Jesus. And we’re told it was their faith, not the faith of the man lying on the mat, that so impressed Jesus that he healed him.
I’ve written previous reflections on this same passage, focusing on the importance of community as sometimes we are the ones doing the carrying and other times we are the ones in need of being carried to Jesus for healing or forgiveness.
But today the aspect that stood out to me was that of Jesus sending the healed man home. Why did he tell him to go home? I don’t know the thoughts of Jesus or the gospel writer, but for me it speaks of the importance of carrying on with our day to day lives. We may have at times, or even just once in our lifetime, extraordinary experiences of healing or forgiveness, some kind of significant spiritual encounter, yet aren’t we still called to return home and live out whatever our vocation is? There will still be chores to do and work to be done and children or pets or elderly parents or even neighbors to take care of. And I think the question is, at least for me, how do we live our day to day lives as healed, forgiven, transformed children of God?
The gospel reading ends with the people who witnessed this being “astounded” and glorifying God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this.” How did they integrate this profound experience with their everyday lives? How might we?
Let us pray today’s Responsorial Psalm with and for each other, “Do not forget the works of the Lord!” and ask for the guidance to live our day to day lives in holiness.
~Eileen Miller