Rebuked the fever, and it left her
3 SEPTEMBER (Lk 4,38-44)
God, the Creator of man, leans on one of his creatures. This gesture expresses closeness, solidarity and great fellowship. However, the one of Jesus is not a vain, empty and sterile mercy. He bends over to take upon himself the evil of his creature. He assumes it to remove it, to free and to give a new life. Jesus bent over to take all diseases, all the suffering, all the pain and all the sins of mankind. He took all our evil to atone for it from the cross and to deliver us from it.
What Jesus did, today he must do it in his body that is the Church. The Church is also called to bend over to take all the physical and spiritual pain of the world, climb on the cross of her burnt offering and atone for the entire humanity. This is her daily liturgy: the celebration of her own sacrifice for the atonement of the sins of the world. If the Church does not bend over and does not free, she has failed in her mission. Every one of her members for his part, must be an operator of redemption, salvation, deliverance from sin, from spiritual death, from idolatry and from all ungodliness.
Like Jesus, the Church must also take to heart the suffering of the world. She can never be separated in the world. She was sent to take the flesh of this world and this flesh is in suffering, sorrow, sickness, sin and death. This flesh must not be alien to her. It is her flesh, the one she assumed when every person becomes the body of Christ in the waters of baptism. If it is assumed flesh, it is not a strange flesh. If it is not a strange flesh, it is her flesh and she must lean on it to soothe, heal, cure, liberate and restore to health.
This most pure vision of faith must be the truth that guides every child of the Church in all that he does, in any field he operates: from politics to science, from teaching to research, from finance to the economy, from manual labour to every other activities that governs our sociality. Every decision must always be thought of as a way to soothe, heal, cure and restore to health the wounds of sin that exist on our earth and that are truly many. The Christian misunderstanding consists in a split of life into two incommunicable areas: the area of the sacred and field of the profane. It is urgent instead to transform the sacred into the profane and the profane into the sacred. Without the unification of these two areas, we will always have an artificial religion.
After he left the synagogue, he entered the house of Simon. Simon’s mother-in-law was afflicted with a severe fever, and they interceded with him about her. He stood over her, rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up immediately and waited on them. At sunset, all who had people sick with various diseases brought them to him. He laid his hands on each of them and cured them. And demons also came out from many, shouting, “You are the Son of God.” But he rebuked them and did not allow them to speak because they knew that he was the Messiah. At daybreak, Jesus left and went to a deserted place. The crowds went looking for him, and when they came to him, they tried to prevent him from leaving them. But he said to them, “To the other towns also I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God, because for this purpose I have been sent.” And he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea.
Jesus did not come to stay in one place. Once the mission has been brought to fruition, it is right that he goes elsewhere. By so doing, He teaches us that there is the necessary and the superfluous, what gives life and what no longer gives life. He also teaches us that each of us must deprive himself in every field of the superfluous so that others have what is necessary. They were healed, cleansed and freed. So why keep him? To do what? For what? Only to fill their eyes with Him. To Jesus this is a superfluous, useless and vain work. Others are yet to be freed. He did not bend over others yet. He has not yet healed, cured and comforted them. He has not yet opened them the doors of hope. This action principle also applies to us. We cannot be spiritual egoists and not even for things concerning matter. What is not needed is of the others. It must be left to them. Jesus is now of the others. He must go to the others.
Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints teach us true love.