Daily Readings Reflection for 1/13/10

Reflection on Today’s Daily Readings by Fr. Bertrand Buby, SM

Today’s Readings


Scripture for Jan. 13. Wednesday, 2010. Year 2. Lectionary # 307. ISamuel
3:1-10.19-20. Psalm 40:2-5.7-8.8-9.10. Mark 1:29-39.

Praying not only relaxes us and prepares us for doing things, it also
motivates us to do them with enthusiasm. We are blessed today with three
readings, including the Psalm and its response, that can easily motivate us
this day. First, there is the call story of the young Samuel who is in the
Temple prescincts not far from the presiding elderly priest Eli who is
disturbed three times by the boy who thinks it is Eli who is calling him.
It is however Adonai, the Lord, who summons Samuel to get ready for his
prophetic role in Israel. This young Samuel fuels our own prayer with his
openness to the Lord, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."

The Psalm response is a mirroring of this response and helps us to continue
deepening our own motivation from the call, the vocation, that we have
received. Our response is the same, "Here am I, Lord; I come to do your
will." (Psalm 40:3).

Mark's selection contains two reflections about Jesus. The first shows us
Jesus as continuing his healing in the presence of his first four
disciples. The one who is the beneficiary of this healing is Peter's
mother-in-law. Like Samuel Peter, Andrew, James, and John are learning to
listen to the Lord and to see how he is manifesting himself by his healing
and his power over evil.

Mark then ends with one of the most compact and masterful summaries of what
Jesus does as a day is ending. He continues to heal those who come to the
door of the lodging where he is and he cures, heals, and casts out demons.
Finally, exhausted, he separates himself from the crowd of people in order
to commune privately with God his Father--he has no Father but God in
Mark's Gospel. He prays and is absorbed in it but when finished he must
continue on to bring the Good News to other towns and villages filled with
people who are hungry for food but also yearning for God. "So he (Jesus)
went into their synagogues preaching the good news adn expelling demons
throughout the whole of Galilee." Amen.