5 February 2012
A HELPING HAND
Yesterday morning I went to Mt Wellington parish. to spend time with Fr Ikenasio and a couple of his parish council. They have asked me to give a morning’s seminar on what is a Parish and various things about liturgy, worship and so on! So an hour or so of planning. On the way home I called into Ellerslie Presbytery to see the Parish Priest Fr Robert O’Brien. I asked him had he prepared his homily? Being the organized person I know he is, he had. At that stage while I had given some thought to today’s Scriptures (but I had not got very far). So I said how are you going to start off? He said I am going to thank all the women who give so much of their time and talent to the church. Simon Peter’s mother in law was sick when Jesus arrived with a few others hanging on, he cured her and she then got busy doing things to make Jesus and his friends welcome. So may I say to all the women and the men who give much of their time to church things – thank you!
But it all fitted in quite well. Our Bulletin has already been printed and I supplied for the back page a prayer for volunteers. But then earlier in the week I had got the message from the parish staff that our number of volunteers had diminished. So if you have a bulletin with you would you take up? (Go over needs). The book of Job is not the most cheerful book in the Bible. He was having a hard time of it. I wonder if anyone volunteered to help?
But it is true that life can become a little burdensome; there is always something that has to be done and if you read the daily paper or watch the night news there seems to be a lot of negative stuff around. But there is a telling phrase in the gospel: Jesus standing near the bed of Peter’s mother in law, “took her hand and helped her up”. We use the phrase, don’t we, “a helping hand”. Maybe that’s a phrase we could put some thought to today. Is there anybody around that we could give a hand to — the hand of friendship, a helping hand, a friendly hand. Even going out of your way to do so.
It is interesting to notice that Jesus brings wholeness by his presence, healing, just by touching someone, Peter’s mother in law. But then things got busy. “That evening after sunset they brought to him all who were sick and those who were possessed. The whole town came crowding around and he cured many who were suffering. Was it a case of getting a free healing or did they appreciate the wholeness that the presence of Jesus brought them? I don’t know. How do we react to life’s situations when everything seems to busy.
Maybe the secret really is found in the fact that Jesus got away from it all by spending some quiet time, went to a lonely place, to PRAY! Now I know it’s hard to find time for quiet prayer. But maybe there could be those 40 seconds that it takes to pray the Lord’s prayer before the evening meal. Coming to centre.
A moment of weakness or a moment of strength. Paul puts it well in the second reading: “To the weak I became weak so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that I might win the weak….I do it all for the sake of the gospel so that I may share in its blessings”