Gospel for Thursday, 2nd Week in Ordinary Time

From: Mark 3:7-12

Cures Beside the Sea of Galilee

[7] Jesus withdrew with His disciples to the sea, and a great multitude from Galilee followed; also from Judea [8] and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from about Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, hearing all that He did, came to Him. [9] And He told His disciples to have a boat ready for Him; [10] for He had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed upon Him to touch Him. [11] And whenever the unclean spirits beheld Him, they fell down before Him and cried out, "You are the Son of God." [12] And He strictly ordered them not to make Him known.
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Commentary:

10. During our Lord's public life people were constantly crowding round Him to be cured (cf. Luke 6:19; 8:45; etc). As in the case of many other cures, St. Mark gives us a graphic account of what Jesus did to these people (cf. Mark 1:31, 41; 7:31-37; 8:22-26; John 9:1-7, 11, 15). By working these cures our Lord shows that He is both God and man: He cures by virtue of His divine power and using His human nature. In other words, only in the Word of God become man is the work of our Redemption effected, and the instrument God used to save us was the human nature of Jesus--His Body and Soul--in the unity of the person of the Word (cf. Vatican II, "Sacrosanctum Concilium", 5).

This crowding round Jesus is repeated by Christians of all times: the holy human nature of our Lord is our only route to salvation; it is the essential means we must use to unite ourselves to God. Thus, we can today approach our Lord by means of the sacraments, especially and pre-eminently the Eucharist. And through the sacraments there flows to us, from God, through the human nature of the Word, a strength which cures those who receive the sacraments with faith (cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, "Summa theologiae", III, q. 62, a. 5).
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Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland.

Reprinted with permission from Four Courts Press and Scepter Publishers, the U.S. publisher.