THE WORD BECAME FLESH

Monday of second Sunday of Easter, 2022

1Pt 5:5-14

Ps 89

Mark 16:15-20

Feast of St Mark, Evangelist

My Son Mark

Dear friends in Christ, how often do we address each other as brothers and sisters? Though this relationship is not based on descent from the same human family, we see ourselves as having a common inheritance through Christ and belonging to the same family of God’s people. But, have we been able to integrate well, based on our baptism and common humanity rather than based on blood, or ethnic affiliation? The real source of our strength is the diversity that exists in the unity of our church, faith, and nation.

Our first reading today (1Peter 5:5-14) is the pastoral writing of Peter to the Church of his time, in which he advised the people to live in humility. “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility towards one another, for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that in due time, he may exalt you.” The whole passage rests on these few lines. Humility is a modest view of oneself. St. Bernard defines it as, "A virtue by which a man knowing himself as he truly is, abases himself.” It is simply the quality of not thinking that you are better than others, but rather of attributing whatever you have to the grace of God in you. That was one of the great examples that the Apostles left for us, as followers of Christ. It is a modest imitation of the humility of Christ himself “who did not count his equality with God as a thing to be grasped but humbled himself to accepting death on a cross. For that reason, he was exalted and raised above all of creation.”

That is a great virtue of the evangelist Mark, whose feast we celebrate today. He was the son of a widow known as Mary in Jerusalem; and a cousin of St Barnabas. He had joined Paul and Barnabas on the first missionary journey (cf. Acts 13:13ff) but had to return home and for that reason could not be part of Paul’s second missionary journey; he instead accompanied Barnabas on a different mission. John Mark later became a disciple of Peter and wrote the Gospel named after him, which is considered a carefully laid out teaching of Peter. That means in his writing, we have next to an eye-witness account of the life of Jesus. In his work, he gives more of a vivid account of the life of Jesus, as if they were the memories of someone present at the scene of the events. He must have been such a humble and faithful follower of Peter and so one could understand when Peter refers to him as ‘my son Mark.’

How humble are we today, in the service of God and the community? What view of yourself do you have and present to others? That of someone who has received from God and is giving back to the community, or that of someone who is Lord and master? What do people think of you? Is it that of someone who is humble and approachable or of someone rude and arrogant, one who is full of himself and who is beyond correction? Think of it again, what is it you have that no one has had before? What do you have, that you have not received?

Let us pray: Lord, teach us the lesson of humility and help us to follow your example always. Amen. 

+Remain blessed