Feb 8th, 2019 Motjari meeting: Fr. Foeckler’s lecture

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Friday, Feb 8th, 2019 못자리 Motjari meeting

Fr. Foeckler started his lecture asking about last Sunday’s Gospel. It was Sunday, Feb 3rd,  4th Sunday in Ordinary time.

Gospel: Luke 4: 21-30

Jesus began speaking in the synagogue, saying:

“Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. 

They also asked, “Isn’t this the son of Joseph?”

He said to them, “Surely you will quote me this proverb,

‘Physician, cure yourself,’ and say,

‘Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.'”

And he said, “Amen, I say to you, 

no prophet is accepted in his own native place.

Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah was sent,

but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon.

Again, there were many lepers in Israel

during the time of Elisha the prophet;

yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” 

When the people in the synagogue heard this,

they were all filled with fury.

They rose up, drove him out of the town,

and led him to the brow of the hill

on which their town had been built,

to hurl him down headlong.

But Jesus passed through the midst of them and went away.

We know Jesus was born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth and must had been there until He had started His public ministry when He became 30 yrs old. All throughout these 30 years, only one event had been recorded, thus called hidden years. This event happened when He was 12 at a Temple in Jerusalem, where He had stayed behind for 3 days without Mary and Joseph’s knowledge ( Luke 2:44-45 ). When Mary and Joseph realized He was missing and came back to find Him at the temple, they must have had a conversation like this.

Mary: Jesus, why did you do this to us? Do you know how sorrowful we were when we realized you are not with us?

Jesus: Mother, why did you look for me? You didn’t know that I must be about my Father’s business? (Luke 2:49)

Now, we must align their relationship. St. Mary is, of course, the mother of Jesus, but St. Joseph is His foster father. Jesus dearly loved Mary and Joseph, but He knew, even He was only 12, our Lord, God is His real Father, and he had to be about His Business.

Today, we need to focus on Him between the year of 12 and 30.

Jesus went back to Nazareth, His hometown. Nazareth is a small town, built on a big hill. When people heard Jesus came from Nazareth, they laughed and said, “What good could come from Nazareth?” Nazareth was such small town, mediocre at best.

In His years in Nazareth, we can imagine Him going into a synagogue, where the Jewish gather together reading the books of the Lord. He must have helped Joseph in carpentry. He must have helped Mary doing chores. He had lead an ordinary life doing boring and tedious works.

When Jesus began public ministry, He went to a synagogue in Nazareth, and read out a scroll of the prophet Isaiah: 

(Luke 4:18)The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

and claimed:

(Luke 4:21) He said to them, “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

People of Nazareth believed they knew Him from His younger years. They started to question His message. Then Jesus said;

(Luke 4: 24)And he said, “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.

His work and mission

He has done a lot of work and show miracles through teaching, healing people, raising the dead, sacrificed Himself on a cross and resurrected on the third day, and so on. Through all those works and miracles, we know His goal is redemption, salvation. Every single action He had taken and every single word He had said was to save us.

Ordinary time

The color for ordinary time is green. This time focuses on quite time of Jesus’s life. Jesus had boring, ordinary time for the most part of His life. He had sanctified for 30 years.

No job is better than the others, if you do it for God. What we do it is not important, but how we do it is, if we do it with love for Jesus.

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Other note:

Feb 8th is the feast day of St. Josephine Bahkita. Below is quoted from Catholic online website.

Saint Josephine Margaret Bakhita was born around 1869 in the village of Olgossa in the Darfur region of Sudan. She was a member of the Daju people and her uncle was a tribal chief. Due to her family lineage, she grew up happy and relatively prosperous, saying that as a child, she did not know suffering.

Historians believe that sometime in February 1877, Josephine was kidnapped by Arab slave traders. Although she was just a child, she was forced to walk barefoot over 600 miles to a slave market in El Obeid. She was bought and sold at least twice during the grueling journey.

For the next 12 years she would be bought, sold and given away over a dozen times. She spent so much time in captivity that she forgot her original name.

As a slave, her experiences varied from fair treatment to cruel. Her first owner, a wealthy Arab, gave her to his daughters as a maid. The assignment was easy until she offended her owner’s son, possibly for the crime of breaking a vase. As punishment, she was beaten so severely she was incapacitated for a month. After that, she was sold.

One of her owners was a Turkish general who gave her to his wife and mother-in-law who both beat her daily. Josephine wrote that as soon as one wound would heal, they would inflict another.

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