HOMILY OF FRIDAY OF THE FIFTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME YEAR B
Genesis 3:1-8, Mark 7:31-37
THEME: MAKING A RESPECTFUL USE OF OUR GIFTS
It is often awful seeing our today’s prophets making spectacle of people who have infirmities and in dare need. Majority of our tele-evangelists, in the rush for cheap popularity and patronage, are fond of creating scene with their deliverance sections. They line up the sick for healing service show and create movies with their “Man of God versus demon” dialogue. Some glory when demons speak up to give them accolades. They package their advert with those scenes, where the so-called demons begin to utter words like, “I know you. You are a powerful man of God. I did not want to come here, because I know that you are always surrounded with fire. It was our queen who sent me here. Now, you have arrested me, man of God. I will go! I will go! Please allow me to go.”
However, in our today’s gospel, Jesus accorded with respect, the man who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech; he took him aside from the multitude privately and healed him. Mark 7: 31-36. He did not make a public show of him. He treated him as a person, and not as a case. He attended to him as a son of Abraham and not as a specimen or a mere client. And after the healing, he charged the people not to tell anyone.
As true minsters of God or those who take after Jesus, we cannot learn otherwise. Our gifts are not meant to be used to court attention. They are meant to help others and to restore dignity of those who are under the bondage of Satan, and not to be used to take them for show.
May the Lord help us that we may be humble. May his gifts instil in us deep respect for our fellow human beings. As result of our endowment, may we not in arrogance play down on the integrity of others. Amen.
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