Sunday, 2/5/12
Outside of Lent in 2012 our
Sunday Gospels will follow Mark’s Gospel, chapter by chapter. After the liturgical
scholars settled on this Gospel for today, they next searched through the Old Testament for a
reading that would best compliment it.
Seeing that today’s Gospel
speaks of Simon’s mother-in-law being sick and suffering, the scholars set out
to find an Old Testament passage that dealt with ill health. That had them
settling on this paragraph in which Job lamented over his sleepless nights. The
choice of these two readings tells up that the Church today suggests that we
should examine our Christian attitude towards suffering.
Except for toothaches years
ago I have had little experience of pain. My lack of experience has led me to
ask others about it.
The Burmese nuns who work
nights at our Catherine Laboure Manor say that night after night they suffer along
with people in pain. It often happens that patients have doctors who allow
pain pills to be given only once in four or six hours. That leads to real
misery when the relief from the pill last only two hours. It must be awful for the
poor sick person who must put up with hours of pain.
Members of the family are
so grateful to Hospice for dulling the pain for loved ones when death is near.
One man yesterday told me that
once he knows the cause of the pain he is able to accept it as a fact. That’s
good. We must accept what is.
My niece who has been
working with the mentally handicapped for forty years said that people who were
brought up in loving families are able to say, “I must accept the bad with the
good.” On the contrary, those who have had nothing but bad breaks can do
nothing but rebel.
Another person this week
spoke to me about pleasures of the mind that balance the pain of the flesh. This
lady said unselfish people can see major pain as a lesser matter.
As against that, selfish people
see small hurts as major. The priest who followed Father Flannigan as head of
Boys’ Town flew out to Korea in December of 1953, and he sat across the aisle
from Joe DiMaggio and Marylyn Monroe. He told me the pair didn’t talk the whole
way across the Pacific. Marylyn had a sore finger that she held up and pouted
and pouted over.
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