Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord
March 25, 2020 12:00 pm · Sergio Muñoz Fita
REFLECTIONS ON THE HEALING OF A LEPER (Mk 1: 40-45) III
Yesterday we spoke about the reality that the Word of God always has for us and how we should meditate on it with patience and inner calm. The fact that it is eternal means that it is always present, it is always life-giving, it is always luminous to us. So it is important, it seems to me, to avoid the temptation to demand answers when we want to hear them. We cannot place ourselves before God like St. James and St. John and say to our Lord: “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." (Mk 10:35) This attitude is not respectful towards Jesus Christ. Who are we to treat God like this? We already know what the sons of Zebedee wanted: they wanted Jesus to assure them, right then and there, the two best places in his Kingdom. The Lord's reply? “It is not mine to give”. (v. 40) I imagine that they were very disappointed, and yet there we also find a lesson for ourselves: many times, we do not know what we are asking (v. 38) and God, who is very patient, will give us what we need if we learn to let Him direct our lives.
Everything we find in Sacred Scripture is the Word of God, including the facts of Jesus' life. In the Lord, everything speaks; in everything there is a message, a teaching, a life. The Catechism expresses it in a way that has always amazed me: “The whole life of Christ is Revelation of the Father: his words and his works, his silences and his sufferings, his way of being and his way of speaking. Jesus can say: "Whoever sees me, sees the Father." (Jn 14, 9), and the Father can say: "This is my beloved Son; listen to him." (Lk 9, 35) Our Lord, having become man to fulfill the will of the Father (cf. Heb 10,5-7), "manifested the love that he has for us" (1 Jn 4,9) with the simplest features of his mysteries”. (CCE 516)
If this is so, then everything in the life of Jesus is meaningful to us. The works and words of Jesus are "intrinsically united" (Dei Verbum 2) and the Lord acts on many occasions to illustrate what he says with what he does. The examples are exceedingly abundant and we cannot stop here to cite them. The important thing is to understand that everything in the Lord, his Person and his work, is Word to us.
I want to speak about a couple of verses that appear in the first chapter of the Gospel of St. Mark, although today we will focus on just one of them. It is said that the second gospel is divided into two sections and a conclusion. The first section concludes with one of the highlights of the entire Gospel: Peter's confession in which, at the Lord's question , "Who do you say that I am?" (Mk 8:27), he proclaims that Jesus is the Messiah. (v. 29) The second part of the Gospel ends with the death of the Lord and a second confession, this time that of the Roman soldier next to the cross, who exclaims: "Truly, this was the son of God!" (Mk 15:39). These two titles of Jesus, Messiah and Son of God, appear in the first verse of the Gospel, in the title of the entire work: "Beginning of the Good News of Jesus, Messiah, Son of God." (Mk 1:1). These first words of the Gospel could be understood as an indication that the evangelist is showing us the general structure of all his writing.
What I want to speak about here is the expression: "Good News of Jesus." The genitive of the original Greek text allows two different ways of understanding these words: good news that Jesus brings, and good news that it is Jesus. As you can see, from the beginning, we are being taught the same idea that we have been talking about, the union between the Person and the activity, being and acting, of the Lord. In other words, the Gospel, the Good News, is not only what the Lord says but is Himself. His Person, his gestures and his works are Good News because He is our salvation, which we have the responsibility to receive.
In these days when so many people feel anguish and fear because of hopeless news, and where decisions are made, perhaps hastily and poorly weighed, we ask the Lord to grant us the grace to receive the "Good News of Jesus Christ". (v. 1) Let us ask the Holy Spirit to always put in us the most acceptable interior attitudes to receive the Word of God in the pondering of the heart, as Mary did. That the more noise there is around us, the more silence we will bring to our lives, taking care with what we read, who we listen to and the things we see. "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away." (Mk 13:31)
Really, the only Word to which we must pay attention in the current crisis is the "Good News" that Jesus brings us, the Good News that is Jesus.
