Year B, Lectionary 74
We humans suffer through various harsh experiences in our lives but in order to be healed from them we need to let Jesus live in us. Like with Simon's ill mother-in-law, we must let God enter our homes, approach us and lift us up. To experience this healing we must constantly be connected to God and prayer is needed for this. Like Jesus, it is our way to be empowered, find peace and direction.
Hate feeling lost on Sundays at church? Searching for a better explanation of the Bible than what you hear from your pastor's sermon? Check out the following collection of audio, video, and text commentaries from various Christian experts for a better understanding of today's scripture that deal with: Closeness • Complain • Connection • Direction • Discern • Eucharist • Evangelize • Evil • Gather • Healing • Inclusion • Job • Kingdom • Liberation • Limitation • Mission • Obedience • Peter • Power • Prayer • Preach • Relationship • Rest • Restore • Routine • Sabbath • Serve • Solitude • St. Edmund Campion • St. Mark • St. Peter • Suffering • Truth • Universal • Weak •
“Here Paul is describing his method of evangelization, his method of preaching the gospel as both universal and we might say enculturated”
“Christ accepts us, clinging to the wreckage, broken, limited, sinful and struggling, long before we accept him. He comes to set us free, to make us whole.”
“prayer is going to God that we may be able to see things through the eyes of God, going to God that we may be able to find the meaning behind the things that we do”
“everybody gathers at the door of Jesus and everyone has a place with the saints of heaven sitting around the table of our savior Jesus Christ”
“Can we put God's love into action? Can we put God's healing touch into action?”
“take the time to think, take the time to reflect, take the time to pray. It pays for scripture says 'be still and know that I am God.' And so when you know that you are not God you will have no need to worry because worrying is not part of your job description.”
“Are we welcoming Jesus into the house?”
“although illness and sin go together in the Old Testament and illness and demonic activity can be associated with one another, that's not necessarily the case”
“When our burdens are lifted, what can we do? We can see. And when you and I can see we're able to offer and that's the gift.”
“It is easy to praise God when everything is right in our world. The true test of our praise is to be able to praise God when we are in dark and painful situations.”
“when we find ourselves broken in some way can we allow our hearts to be open to see the hand that reaches for us and to grasp it and to allow ourselves to be lifted up?”
“Nothing about our present circumstances, be they good or bad, change the nature of God. God is still the same today as God was yesterday and God will still be the same tomorrow.”
“If you have been healed of your own broken heart there's a Job out there, there's a Peter's mother-in-law out there that you are called to go and lift up out of the bed”
“If you and I do not have a 'why' or a mission in our life, when life becomes fatiguing we give up”
“The incarnation, the Word made flesh, that happened in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a sign of God's closeness to us. Our God is not a distant God.”
“You have the power to touch the sick and to lift them up. Now there are many ways of lifting up the sick, aren't there?”