12 January 2021
Tuesday of the First Week of Ordinary Time
The pandemic has preyed on our greatest weaknesses and is calling forth our greatest strengths. Our bodies are susceptible to the virus, and our minds and hearts also for the way in which it stokes individualism. If anyone of us is just looking out for only ourselves, we will not overcome the virus. The virus will continue to thrive unless the fractures in our human community are healed. We have to recognize the ways in which we are like the man possessed by an unclean spirit in the Gospel today.
The unclean spirit addresses Jesus the same way then as now, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?” We usually do not accept Jesus’ offer for healing because we are worried that we will not get what we truly want. A world in which we are at the center seems the “safer” option than risking a world that has the love of God which embraces all of us. Jesus’ ministry and passion closes the space that we imagine between ourselves because he reminds us that we have one common origin and destiny. If Jesus addresses us as sisters and brothers, we are made one human family again in Him.
Human fraternity is the Holy Father’s prayer intention for this month: “May the Lord give us the grace to live in full fellowship with our brothers and sisters of other religions, praying for one another, open to all.” May we pray with the Holy Father, and ask the Lord we are renewed with in the sense of our belonging to one another.
What are the images and experiences during the pandemic where you have seen a renewal of human fraternity?