This passage from St. Luke's Gospel could be captioned,
A Day in the Life of Christ, because it gives us a sort of snapshot of the various things he did on an average day,
in which he was living as the revealed Messiah, the one who had been sent into the world
and who had revealed himself to his people through his miracles and through the power of his teaching.
So the passage from the Gospel begins by telling us that he had returned from the synagogue
where he had been preaching and engaging the people, both his friends and enemies,
and entered the house of Simon Peter in Capernaum, which apparently was sort of the headquarters when they were in that area.
And there found his mother-in-law afflicted with a fever, and so he had to take care of her.
And then she managed to put together supper for the apostles.
And by the time the sun was going down, people had crowded around the house with their sick,
and he left the table, left his little sanctuary, the house, and went outside and began to cure the sick.
And he laid hands on each person, so everybody that came was given an opportunity.
He had to stand directly in front of our Lord, and he took care of each one individually.
And there were even people delivered from Satan,
and so he had to contend also with the devil in the midst of all this.
And while he cast the devils out, he also rebuked them and prevented them from revealing who he was.
And then we assume that our Lord managed to get some sleep, but he got up early,
and went out to a deserted place where he might have time to pray.
But it wasn't long before people realized that he wasn't in the house,
and so they went looking for him.
And they found him in this deserted place and began to impose upon him.
And they wanted to negotiate with him to make sure that he wouldn't leave their town.
They wanted him to stay, but he told them that he had other places to go.
And at the end...
we are told that he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea.
So our Lord was, you might say, a busy man,
and largely because of the imposition that others placed upon him.
People came to him and didn't give him time to himself.
And this is the experience of anyone who is in a position to say,
I am in a position where they have responsibility for others,
parents, teachers, priests, and just about everyone at one time or another,
comes in this position, and we often are tempted to be selfish,
or to excuse our selfishness because we have to take care of ourselves.
And really we do!
And that is why our Lord got up,
and told us that he wanted to go home.
And that is why our Lord got up, and told us that he needed us to go home.
early in the morning and went off to pray. That's why he took his apostles aside from
the hustle and bustle so that they would have time to pray. But otherwise, they were at
the dispositions of others. And that was, in fact, of course, a real burden and it brings
a certain kind of hecticness to life and a certain amount of unpredictability. Our
Lord didn't, you know, necessarily expect people to show up at the house at the end
of the day at sunset when he was ready to retire with a whole crowd of sick people.
But that's what happened. And he didn't expect to come home and find Martha sick in
in bed, but that's just the way it was. He didn't expect to go off and find a quiet place that
nobody knew about and end up finding people following him there, but that was just the way
it was. And in each instance, our Lord adapted in the most charitable way possible. Now, of course,
this isn't to say that we sometimes have to say no. A lot of people neglect their duties
because they say yes to things that they probably shouldn't say yes to. They get involved in all
kinds of extracurricular activity when they should be taking care of the home or their work or their
children. But in terms of the responsibilities that we do have that impinge upon us and sometimes
make life, or very often, perhaps most of the time, make life inconvenient and unpredictable,
that's not the case.
That's life. It's just the way it is. And that's part of the fraternal charity that each one of us
has to practice. In the end, our Lord's a lesson to us. He is the teacher, the rabbi,
and he teaches not only by his words, but by his example. His example confirms his words,
unlike the Pharisees, who would never have done these kinds of things,
would never have been available the way our Lord was. Our Lord teaches us
that we have to be faithful to God.
And that's part of the fraternal charity that each one of us has to practice.
That we need to forget ourselves. That we really need to offer ourselves up in the spirit of
sacrifice and recognize that every cross, every contradiction, every inconvenience can be something
precious to us. And that's part of the fraternal charity that each one of us has to practice.
That we need to practice in the sight of God and beneficial for souls,
if we, you know, go apart as often
as we can, when there is time,
and spend time with God in a deserted
place, in a place where we can
re-energize and
unite ourselves with God.
And that's part of the fraternal charity that each one of us has to practice.
And that's part of the fraternal charity that each one of us has to practice.
And that's part of the fraternal charity that each one of us has to practice.
Paul was a man responsible for several religious communities
and the work of those religious communities was to take care of the poor and the sick.
And he even told the sisters and the brothers that if someone was in need,
that they were free to leave the chapel and take care of the needs of the poor.
Because he said that you're just leaving the service of Jesus in one place
and going to the service of Jesus in another.
Now that's not an excuse not to pray or not to observe the rule of prayer,
especially for religious.
But St. Vincent de Paul also, in the midst of the hustle and bustle,
something went wrong and he found himself without peace.
Some disaster or some crisis.
Contradiction or somebody who had given him a hard time
or perhaps he just hadn't had any time to himself and something was bothering him.
He would go before the Blessed Sacrament and he wouldn't leave until he had his peace restored.
So there is a balance that can be found.
But in the end, we've got to lose our selfishness
and be willing to focus on the good of the Lord and the good of souls.
So our life should be,
God,
God,
come a day in the life of Christ,
which was a day of total generosity and charity.
Amen.
Amen.
Thank you for watching.