“I Must Preach the Good News to the Other Cities Also”
Today’s Gospel presents us with a beautiful picture of Jesus whose entire life is given for others. He enters Simon’s house and finds Simon’s mother in law suffering from a high fever. They speak to Him about her, and Jesus immediately draws near. He rebukes the fever, she is healed, and she rises to serve them. By evening, the doorway has become a gathering place for suffering humanity. The sick are brought to Him, and Jesus receives them one by one.
There is something deeply moving in the words of Saint Luke: “He laid his hands on every one of them and healed them.”
Jesus does not encounter suffering as an anonymous crowd. He sees the person. He touches the person. Each life matters to Him.
Christ Draws Near to Human Suffering
This is one of the great truths revealed throughout the Gospel: God is not distant from human suffering. In Jesus Christ, God has entered it.
The sick who came to Jesus that evening carried different illnesses and different stories, just as we carry different burdens today. Some wounds can be seen; others remain hidden within the heart. There are people carrying grief, loneliness, anxiety about their families, financial difficulties, broken relationships, disappointment, temptation and the burden of sin.
Christ does not promise His disciples a life untouched by suffering. He offers something greater: His presence within it.
The same Jesus who entered Simon’s house still comes among His people. We encounter Him in prayer, in Sacred Scripture and most profoundly in the sacramental life of the Church. In the Eucharist, the Lord who once allowed the suffering to approach Him gives Himself to us as the Bread of Life. In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, He meets the wounded sinner with mercy and offers the freedom of forgiveness.
Sometimes the healing we ask for comes in ways we immediately recognise. At other times, God gives us the strength to carry what has not yet been taken away. Christian faith does not demand that we pretend suffering does not hurt. It teaches us that suffering need never be faced without Christ.
“He Laid His Hands on Every One of Them” We should not pass too quickly over this detail.
Jesus could have healed everyone with a single word. Yet the Gospel deliberately tells us that He laid His hands upon each one. This reveals something about the heart of God.
Before God, no human being disappears into the crowd. The elderly person whom society has begun to overlook matters to Him. The child whom others consider inconvenient matters to Him. The poor, the sick, the lonely, the prisoner, the migrant, the person carrying a troubled past and the person quietly struggling behind a smiling face all possess an immeasurable dignity.
Every human life has value because every human person is created in the image of God and is loved by Him. And if Christ sees people in this way, His disciples must learn to do the same.
It is possible to speak about loving humanity while failing to love the person standing immediately before us. The Gospel brings Christian charity much closer to home. There may be someone within our own family who needs patience, someone at work who needs encouragement, an elderly neighbour who needs companionship, or someone who simply needs to know that he or she has not been forgotten.
We may not possess the miraculous power of healing displayed by Christ in this Gospel, but we can still allow Christ to use our hands to bring consolation, kindness and hope.
Jesus Goes to a Lonely Place
After an extraordinary evening of healing, Jesus does something that our busy world desperately needs to rediscover.
He withdraws. Saint Luke tells us that when day came, Jesus “departed and went into a lonely place.”
The Son of God, surrounded by people who desperately wanted Him, still made room for solitude and communion with the Father.
If Christ Himself sought silence, how much more do we need it?
Our lives can become filled with noise. Messages arrive constantly. There is always another responsibility, another worry, another conversation and another demand upon our attention. Even our prayer can become hurried.
Yet the Christian cannot live indefinitely on spiritual noise.
We need moments when we stand before God without pretending, without performing and without trying to impress anyone. We need the silence in which the heart can once again hear the voice of the Lord.
Prayer is not an escape from responsibility. Notice what happens after Jesus withdraws: He returns to His mission.
Authentic prayer sends us back into the world with clearer hearts and renewed strength.
“For I Was Sent for This Purpose”
The people eventually find Jesus and want to prevent Him from leaving. Their desire is understandable. They have witnessed His healing power. Why would they want Him to go elsewhere?
But Jesus answers:
“I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose.”
These words reveal the missionary heart of Christ.
Jesus cannot be possessed by one village or one group. The Good News must travel farther. There are other towns, other families, other wounded hearts and other sinners waiting to hear that the Kingdom of God has drawn near.
The Church inherited this mission.
Christianity was never meant to remain comfortably within the walls of our churches. Every Mass ends by sending us back into the world. We receive Christ so that, strengthened by Him, we may carry His presence into our homes, workplaces and communities.
This does not always require preaching sermons. Very often, the most convincing proclamation of the Gospel is a life transformed by it.
When a Christian forgives where the world expects revenge, the Gospel is being proclaimed. When someone chooses honesty when dishonesty would be profitable, Christ is being witnessed to. When we defend human dignity, care for someone who is suffering, remain faithful in difficult circumstances or refuse to abandon hope, the Kingdom of God becomes visible through ordinary human lives.
We Too Have Been Sent
The words of Jesus, “I was sent for this purpose,” should therefore cause every Christian to ask a personal question: For what purpose has God placed me here?
Our vocations are different, but no baptised person is without a mission.
A mother or father has a mission within the family. A young person has a mission among friends and classmates. A worker can bear witness to Christ through integrity and kindness. The elderly and the sick continue to serve the Church through prayer, witness and the offering of their suffering to God.
We do not have to travel to distant countries before we can become missionaries.
Sometimes our mission begins across the dinner table.
Christ first enters Simon’s house, and from there He goes toward the crowds and eventually toward other cities. The Gospel often begins very close to home.
May we therefore allow Jesus to enter the places within us that still need His healing. May we learn from His prayerful communion with the Father. And then, strengthened by His grace, may we refuse to keep the Good News to ourselves.
The world still needs to hear that God has not abandoned His children.
- It still needs mercy.
- It still needs hope.
Above all, it still needs Jesus Christ and remarkably, Christ has chosen His Church including ordinary people like us to carry that Good News into the world.
Let us Pray
Lord Jesus Christ,
You came among us bringing healing to the suffering
and the Good News of the Kingdom to all who would receive You.
Draw near to us in our weakness,
heal the wounds of our hearts,
forgive our sins
and strengthen us in every trial.
Teach us to seek the Father in prayer
and never to become so occupied with the things of this world
that we forget the purpose for which You have called us.
Give us compassionate hearts
that recognise the dignity of every person we meet,
and make our lives faithful witnesses to Your Gospel.
Send us wherever Your love is needed,
so that through our words and actions
others may come to know Your mercy,
Your peace and Your saving love.
For You live and reign
with God the Father,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
Amen.