The Christian Always Gets Going!

January 20, 2011

Mk. 3:7-12

The Lord Jesus became one like us in order to embrace humanity and effect salvation through living life to the full. During His three year ministry, He went around teaching and showing, through His miracles, the Good News of salvation. Whenever necessary, He will heal the sick. It was His best way of empathizing with us and communicating to us His power and love.

In the Gospel we have today, He was being sought by so many people. They were so many that the Lord was afraid that they would crush him...maybe to death! But He did not run away from them. Instead He instructed His apostles to put him on a boat so He could continue His mission. For the Lord, it was His mission first. For the Lord, there is nothing and nobody who could stop him in fulfilling His cause. The unclean spirits recognized it that they themselves, when they saw Him, will fall down before Him and shout, "You are the Son of God!"

As a priest for more than eighteen years, I have already realized the difficulty of being effective in the ministry. Preaching is not an easy task. So is pastoral work, What had consoled me many times in the past is that not everyone who had listened to the Lord's preaching and received the gift of healing changed. The Lord, and the preacher, could only do their best. In the end, the listener or the receiver is responsible. Priesthood may be frustrating. Ministering to the faithful can be very tiring, sad, and even psychotic! Without the necessary vocation and faith, the minister maybe led to disastrous and unwanted end!

But the Lord Jesus was clear in His mission. Salvation! That is much much more than any threat of frustration, sadness or craziness! It is enough reason for and against everything. When the going gets rough, the Lord and the Christian gets going! While it is true that many times giving up seems to be the best thing to do, the Lord will always come to us in and say "no". We never give up on Him and the mission in the same way that He saw through everything to the end up to death!