Monday - February 01, 2021
--St. Thomas Aquinas
TODAY'S READINGS
Reading I
Brothers and sisters:
What more shall I say?
I have not time to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah,
of David and Samuel and the prophets,
who by faith conquered kingdoms,
did what was righteous, obtained the promises;
they closed the mouths of lions, put out raging fires,
escaped the devouring sword;
out of weakness they were made powerful, became strong in battle,
and turned back foreign invaders.
Women received back their dead through resurrection.
Some were tortured and would not accept deliverance,
in order to obtain a better resurrection.
Others endured mockery, scourging, even chains and imprisonment.
They were stoned, sawed in two, put to death at sword’s point;
they went about in skins of sheep or goats,
needy, afflicted, tormented.
The world was not worthy of them.
They wandered about in deserts and on mountains,
in caves and in crevices in the earth.
Yet all these, though approved because of their faith,
did not receive what had been promised.
God had foreseen something better for us,
so that without us they should not be made perfect.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (25) Let your hearts take comfort, all who hope in the Lord.
How great is the goodness, O LORD,
which you have in store for those who fear you,
And which, toward those who take refuge in you,
you show in the sight of the children of men.
R. Let your hearts take comfort, all who hope in the Lord.
You hide them in the shelter of your presence
from the plottings of men;
You screen them within your abode
from the strife of tongues.
R. Let your hearts take comfort, all who hope in the Lord.
Blessed be the LORD whose wondrous mercy
he has shown me in a fortified city.
R. Let your hearts take comfort, all who hope in the Lord.
Once I said in my anguish,
“I am cut off from your sight”;
Yet you heard the sound of my pleading
when I cried out to you.
R. Let your hearts take comfort, all who hope in the Lord.
Love the LORD, all you his faithful ones!
The LORD keeps those who are constant,
but more than requites those who act proudly.
R. Let your hearts take comfort, all who hope in the Lord.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
A great prophet has arisen in our midst
and God has visited his people.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jesus and his disciples came to the other side of the sea,
to the territory of the Gerasenes.
When he got out of the boat,
at once a man from the tombs who had an unclean spirit met him.
The man had been dwelling among the tombs,
and no one could restrain him any longer, even with a chain.
In fact, he had frequently been bound with shackles and chains,
but the chains had been pulled apart by him and the shackles smashed,
and no one was strong enough to subdue him.
Night and day among the tombs and on the hillsides
he was always crying out and bruising himself with stones.
Catching sight of Jesus from a distance,
he ran up and prostrated himself before him,
crying out in a loud voice,
“What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?
I adjure you by God, do not torment me!”
(He had been saying to him, “Unclean spirit, come out of the man!”)
He asked him, “What is your name?”
He replied, “Legion is my name. There are many of us.”
And he pleaded earnestly with him
not to drive them away from that territory.
Now a large herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside.
And they pleaded with him,
“Send us into the swine. Let us enter them.”
And he let them, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine.
The herd of about two thousand rushed down a steep bank into the sea,
where they were drowned.
The swineherds ran away and reported the incident in the town
and throughout the countryside.
And people came out to see what had happened.
As they approached Jesus,
they caught sight of the man who had been possessed by Legion,
sitting there clothed and in his right mind.
And they were seized with fear.
Those who witnessed the incident explained to them what had happened
to the possessed man and to the swine.
Then they began to beg him to leave their district.
As he was getting into the boat,
the man who had been possessed pleaded to remain with him.
But Jesus would not permit him but told him instead,
“Go home to your family and announce to them
all that the Lord in his pity has done for you.”
Then the man went off and began to proclaim in the Decapolis
what Jesus had done for him; and all were amazed.
The power of our interconnectedness
In today's first reading, we learn that none of the people of Old Testament times obtained salvation, not even the holy ones, until we of the New Testament era were saved by what Jesus did on the cross. This does not mean that they went to hell. Remember, eternity is not a clockwise movement through time the way we experience it in our temporal lives. Those who died embracing God's love immediately received the benefits of Christ's future victory over death.
The most interesting point of this scripture is everyone's interconnectedness. The greatest heroes of the Old Testament were not made perfect until Christ died for them and for us too. Although they were promised the eternal joy of union with God, they could not receive it without us. We are all united in the gift of eternal unity with God.
In our individualistic world, we've lost sight of our interconnectedness. We've forgotten what it means to believe in the communion of saints, despite professing it often as we recite the Creed of our Faith. In my opinion, individualism is the biggest sin of our age -- that is, the self-centered "me first" attitude that leads to abortions, many divorces, conflicts within parishes, greed, and you-name-it. The idolatry of self takes the goodness of our individual uniqueness to the opposite of what God intends, leading to crimes against our interconnectedness.
Throughout biblical times, people understood that they were part of a larger whole. In the Old Testament, when one person disobeyed God, the entire community was punished. Today, we think that was unfair. Why should all suffer on account of one? Jesus answered that question when he, as one man, suffered for all.
The fact is, we are all connected to each other. Everything we do creates ripples in the stream of life that reach much farther than we can see. Even our small deeds of kindness make a wide-spread difference. So too our sins. This is why we go to a priest for Confession: Through him, absolution comes not only from Christ but from the whole Body of Christ: the community on earth and in purgatory and in heaven.
In today's Gospel passage, Jesus gets rid of a legion of demons. As Christ's earthly Body now, we continue this ministry. Together, we can be a powerful, undefeatable, miracle-working unit of holy strength that overcomes evil. Together, we have all the power of Christ. But do we choose to actively work together?
The absence of those who are not active in Christian community and ministry is grievous, for this diminishes what the Body can do. The world suffers because of the disconnectedness of Christians, and because some of us are too preoccupied with our self-focused desires to provide our gifts and talents to the works of the Church, and because some clergy and lay leaders assert self-importance instead of imitating Christ's style of servant-leadership.
Do you feel worthless or lonely? The cure is in your connection to the community, which is a life of actively serving and being served.
Today's Prayer
Thank you, Lord, because You have delivered me from great and countless
evils and gave me a new life, fully in Your love. Amen.
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The mother of Jesus promised St. Dominic that, “one day through the rosary & the scapular I shall save the world!”
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