Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Mark (1, 1-8)

The first words of the good news of Jesus Christ the Son of God. Even as it is said in the book of Isaiah the prophet, see, Isent my servant before your face who will make ready your way, The voice of one crying in the waste land make readythe way of the Lord make is road straight. John came and gave baptism by him as a sign of forgiveness of sin for those whose hearts were changed.

And there went out to him all the people of Judaea, and all of those of Jerusalem, and they were given baptism by him in the river Jordan saying that they were sinners. And John was clothed in camel's hair with a leather band about him ; and his food was locusts and honey. And he said to them all : "there is one coming after me who is greater than I, whose shoes Iam not good enough to undo,I have given you baptism with water, but He will give you baptism with the Holy Spirit".

I -Commentary : Prepare the way of the Lord

How many times have we heard it already, that voice of the desert which came to shake us in our spiritual numbness, to reproach us with the lie of our life, the inertia of our love, and to awaken in us the desire for forgiveness; how many times has the messenger Church told us again : "Here is your God; Here is your Lord who comes with power", for saving  you from yourself, to bring you into his work of salvation and make you a savior with him; How many times have God's messengers come as precursors, bringing us the only good new in the world, the certainty to be loved by God? And we did so little to accomodate them.

Shall we hear today a vigorous word, the rough speech of the Baptist, and let it come to our heart ? The more the  years pass, and it becomes increasingly for the Christ to access to our life. He comes to us to console his people, to speak to the heart of his community, to shout to him : "Your bondage is over, I have atoned for your sin!" But we do not know what to invent to delay the decisive head-to-head : "mountains, hills, precipices, escarpments".... arguments, theories, irony, discussions... everything is an opportunity  when it comes to gain time;  and Christ is obliged to take turns, He, the Son of God, whom no man is worthy to have Him under his roof.

We won't get over looking for giving ourselves to him, and we, who are so demanding for the authenticity and the logic, so severe for all the «red herrings» , we sometimes refuse to trace right in the aridity of our life a way for our God. Do not respond promptly to God, to impose on God prerequisites, this is one of the most vivid root of sin in our simple men 's heart and mind ; and in a world increasingly marked by unbelief, the temptation may come to the christian to situate himself at the same time in and outside faith, to rely vaguely to put himself into God concerning his own salvation, while criticizing the things of faith, as if they were alien to him.

We say - or we think - : that the «unbeliever» who dwells in me is entitled in some respects, to some patience, to some privilege, without asking us if the «  believer » who dwells also in me does not have homework now to the One who comes. We wait for God to come up to us, but by the service staircase !!; We desire that His message be adapted to us ; we almost require,- to admit God in our presence- that He accepts to wear our dear ideas clothes, or that he sieves his word in relation with our evidences. We decide in advance, more or less consciously: the God that we will admit, will be the one like this..., or like that !!; Christ whom I welcome will sift his divinity in this... or that...; The gospel that I will announce will have to silence this and proclaim that; The Church I'll serve will have to choose between this or that option.

Sin of Adam, sin of man, sin of the world ! Let us  not fool ourselves, my dears brothers and sisters. We will not do God again ! We will not prevent God from being, in himself and for us, a Mystery of love. We will not prevent the One who is coming, and come in his own way to fulfill what he has promised. We will not stop the Messiah of God, who wants to graze his flock and lead it to rest according to His own methods, on pasture that He has chosen alone; And if it may be good and even necessary to clarify the image, that we have of God and his Son , in order to ensure the authenticity of our approach of faith and hope, it will always be derisory and disappointing to compare God to our human measure and to wait for grace, in our desert, only at the water points we have designated.

But don't be afraid of God, who has only thoughts of peace for us. He understands our reluctance, He respects our struggles. He approves our concern for truth and our loyalty as a simple man who sometimes turns us away from him or rather from his caricatures. He knows, that we are more victims than guilty,in front of  the ways of thinking that so many of our contemporaries share. He knows us helpless, and does not give up saving us. God keeps the initiative of salvation, and before asking us if God enters into the views of man, we must worry about coinciding with God's plans. 

We all know- from experience- that we are never more attentive to the world than when we love it according to God, we are never more intensely the builders of the world than when we enter the work of God. God is working today as in the first days of creation, and throughout the history of Israel: "My Father is still working even now, and so I am working" (John 5,17) ; and nothing and no one will ever prevent God and his Son from to remain on the horizon of all our creations and all our conquests. God is not only for us the infinitely source, He also wants to be the absolute future in this world. Mysterious day where He will come. Don't take God's slowness or God's silence as a dismissal or shyness. As we recalled our second reading, the second letter of Peter, God is not weak, but simply patient, and always overcome by tenderness. Let us welcome, humbly, this peaceful presence of God in the heart of the world, in the heart of history. Let us let God, let the Son of God come into us, let us ourselves be loved: it is here that everything begins, and the only way for being able today, to start again. But this very tenderness creates us duties and makes our conversion urgent. It only takes a moment to return to God, but we will not have too much of the rest of our lives to return to the One who calls us.

II - Meditation: to be converted with St.Joseph

Joseph helps us to live this conversion to the Lord. Throughout his life, we find in his personnality this example of the "fair", consistent with his faith, willing to come into the plan of God, whoever he may be. Of St. Joseph, the Gospel has related only acts, but in spite of this retraint of the Gospels we know of him a magnificent thing : he is the man who knew how to obey God.

Joseph's primary concern, all his way, is to be measured by the will of God. He accepts that God speaks to him through events, happy or unhappy, and that the purpose of God sometimes comes across his plans to draw the cross in his life. He accepts that God be involved by daily significants gestures , without warning him in advance. He agrees not to hold the key of his own existence; he consents that his life be punctuated by the unpredictable initiatives of God, and that the Lord gives him the future in small bites; he is peaceful because he has a poor heart.

What better example than St. Joseph, the obedient par excellence, who wanted to "fit in" with the will of his God, and found his happiness in the shadow of Marie and her Son? Yet God has asked him for a perpetual exodus; and never was he able to stop at the design he had himself planned, which was so fitting in a human logic: he wanted to set up his home in Nazareth, and God wanted first that Jesus borns in Bethlehem, Joseph had to leave Bethlehem in the middle of the night, then stay in Egypt, suspended from a new word of God, then back to Nazareth, according to God's plan. And at all these stages, God found him equal to himself, maximizing the present moment in total submission to the Word of his God, who sometimes improvised for him.

In many ways, our life is like Joseph's one; by many reversals, our road finally turns out to be guided by the most surprising of wisdoms, God's will. That is, gradually, God's own wisdom gives to the present moment all its density of happiness and of salvation: it is enough more and more for the disciples of Jesus, to give place, gradually rising  to the Word of the Lord, which inspires human decisions that are a little bit crazy, with so much future. In this consists all our happiness: "making distribution among one another of whatever has been given to you, like true servants of the unmeasered grace of God » (1 Pet 4,10).

The important thing is that, more and more, God becomes again the only owner of his gifts, and that the human person acquires the reflexes of the good manager, preoccupied only of the Lord, who will find it, when he comes, in his work clothes.  It is a great thing to keep the "Child and His Mother" for unique concern , and to know how to leave, even in the middle of the night, to Egypt or to Nazareth, according to the Father's will. It is a great sacrifice in the eyes of the Lord to see ourselves in the impasse without wanting to betray trust, waiting for God alone to bring out the truth.

At all times the disciple of Christ is in the hands of God, who takes charge of his future and wants to free him from all fear. "Do not be afraid, Joseph," said the Angel of the Lord. The closer we come to the Most High, the more we feel the need to be reassured, because God sometimes answers us "hidden in the storm"; but we know from experience that it is a Father who calls us, and that his love is always deeper, and the cause of everything. When the mystery thickens in our life, it is enough to "keep all things in our heart," and wait for God to reveal his meaning. We are then surprised that everything takes the colors of redemption, that God writes so straight in the meanders of our existence, and that the patience deposited in us, bears the mark of the Holy Spirit.

We stay on our way, and every day we have to convert. The example of Joseph is there to give us courage, but we do not have his righteousness, and we are still half evangelized. To tell the truth, Our poverty doesn'matter from the moment it is accepted and loved! Our joy is in the Lord who has loved us and surrendered for us. Our peace is himself, and when sadness comes crawling, it is because we have looked away from Him who never ceases to look at us with love. We do not have to live in the future, which belongs to his mercy, with his jewels and sorrows; what is given to us is the present,  That's enough to live this week!

Jean Lévêque,

ocd, Province of Paris

III - Prayer of the week

Joseph, happy in the "strong hand of God" (1 Peter 5,6),

teach us to want what our Father wants,

to put our happiness in our obedience,

even when the choice of God surprises or distracts us.

Help us to join Jesus when he wants to be the servant of all

and when he invites us to take for love

the last place that belongs to us right.

Lead us, guide us to the Gospel way;

pray for us, keep us a poor and humble heart,

seeking, for your joy, only the pleasure of God.

You wanted no other mission than to watch over the Child and his Mother:

make us admire their mystery and your willingness to serve.

Get us your strength and your humility,

your love of the weak and your sweetness of the poor.

IV - Practice tracks for this week

• Have I become deeply aware of God's tenderness? Of his patience with me, of his desire to be loved by me despite my misery and my slowness ?

• My turning to God: Where am I in my way ? What keeps me from giving myself to Him without reservation ? By whom or by who am I braked or shut up ?

• Memories, disappointments, injustices still linger in me like so many "roots of bitterness"; what have I done so far to forgive, to find again peace and joy in front of Him ? What should I open, regarding me ?