Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/020512.cfm

What then is my recompense?
That, when I preach,
I offer the gospel free of charge
so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel.


Today's readings from Job, First Corinthians and Mark describe an intensity of work. First we hear of Job's exhaustion:

Is not man's life on earth a drudgery? Are not his days those of hirelings? He is a slave who longs for the shade,a hireling who waits for his wages.

Then we hear of Saint Paul's job description, to preach the Gospel:

If I preach the gospel, this is no reason for me to boast,for an obligation has been imposed on me,and woe to me if I do not preach it!

Finally, we hear of the cycle of Jesus' daily ministry: work (preaching and healing), eating, sleeping and regeneration in prayer. The last might be called his recreation, as in re-creation. It is that which saved him from a life of drudgery. 
It also freed him from the exhausting expectations of the crowd. Although everyone was looking for him, and even pursuing him -- a more precise translation might read tracked him down as if he were a wild animal pursued by hunters -- Jesus found his renewal and reorientation in prayer. 
Always obedient to his Father, he had to leave that scene of enormous success and popularity to pursue the more frustrating effort of preaching in the nearby villages. 


America, the land of the free and home of the brave, cower in its homes against "terrorists" and imprisons millions of citizens to preserve their freedom. A recent article in The New Yorker magazine says:

Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today—perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850. In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system—in prison, on probation, or on parole—than were in slavery then.

Something is not working for us. Our freedom is anything but; our bravery hides behind the most well-armed, well-trained military in human history. 


Saint Francis, who attempted to live the Gospel precisely as Jesus had lived it, found his freedom in owning nothing. He had no need to protect his property for he owned only the open road and the open sky above his head. He claimed his clothes only if they were the worse rags of anyone in his crowd. He ate only what was freely given to him, after everyone else had eaten their fill. 
Francis' freedom was his obedience to the Spirit of God; his work was to do the will of God. 
Thank God we have these scriptures to lead us back to the Truth, and to remind us of how little progress we have made in all these centuries of human development.