Photo by Benjamin Davies on Unsplash
WEEK TWO
MONDAY
Isaiah 35:1-10
Luke 5:17-26
In the days of the overhead projector and the use of acetates I remember watching a clever presenter build up a picture by laying five acetates, one on top of each other. Something similar is perhaps at work with the liturgy of the Word in the season of Advent. We look forward to Christ’s birth at Christmas, are mindful of his Second Coming and are watchful for the signs of His Kingdom here and now.
The Gospel texts this week are a reminder that the Kingdom inaugurated by Christ will reach its fulfilment when he comes again. We await this coming just as eagerly as our Old Testament ancestors waited for the Messiah. We wait in hope and faith.
Today the story of the paralytic from Luke offers us a richness of themes. Woven together in one story I see faith, trust, friendship, courage, the attentiveness of Jesus and a clear sign of his divinity. What struck me today was this sentence:
‘… as the crowd made it impossible to find a way of getting him in, they went up on to the flat roof and lowered him and his stretcher down through the tiles into the middle of the gathering, in front of Jesus.’
What struck me in particular was the word ‘middle’. The men, through their ingenuity and faith, bring their paralysed friend from the periphery right into the middle of the gathering. That day was surely life-changing for them all. A shared experience of internal and external healing will perhaps bind them their life long.
In St Benedict’s monastery there are two things which take priority over all else: the Work of God (Divine Office) and care of the sick.
Care of the sick must rank above and before all else, so that they may be truly served as Christ, for he said: I was sick and you visited me (Matt 25:26), and, What you did for one of these least brothers you did for me. (Matt 25:40).
St Benedict so arranges things that nothing is left to chance when it comes to care of the sick. The sick are not to be on the peripheries of the community, rather they are to be integrated into the whole. There is a designated person, the Infirmarian, who takes overall responsibility and concessions are to be made with diet and the taking of baths. It’s a common sense and reassuringly practical approach. But the care and consideration isn’t all one way. St Benedict cautions:
Let the sick on their part bear in mind that they are served out of honour for God, and let them not by their excessive demands distress their brothers who serve them.
There’s a delicate balance to be struck between admitting a need and hoping that it will be met. There’s courage and love needed for those who serve and for those who are served.
Who do you identify with in today’s Gospel text?