OXYGEN

11 Feb – World Day of Prayer for the Sick; Memorial for Our Lady of Lourdes

Today is an optional memorial for Our Lady of Lourdes. The apparitions concerned began on Feb 11, 1858, when St. Bernadette Soubirous, then a 14-year-old peasant girl from Lourdes admitted, when questioned by her mother, that she had seen a ‘lady’ in the cave of Massabielle, about a mile from the town, while she was gathering firewood with her sister and a friend. Similar appearances of the ‘lady’ took place on 17 further occasions that year. Most Catholics believe that the ‘lady’ concerned is the Virgin Mary.

It was on the ninth appearance on Feb 25 that Bernadette was told by the Lady to dig under a rock and drink the water that she found. A day later, a spring began to flow from it. On Mar 1, the 12th appearance, Catherine Latapie reported that she bathed her paralyzed arm in the spring, and instantaneously regained full movement. This was the first of the scientifically unattributable events to take place.

On the 13th appearance on Mar 2, the Lady commanded Bernadette to tell the priests to “come here in procession and to build a chapel here”. The priests would not do so until they knew who the Lady was. On the 16th appearance on Mar 25, the Lady, with her arms down and eyes raised to heaven, folded her hands over her breast and said, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

To ensure claims of cures were examined properly and to protect the town from fradulent claims of miracles, the Lourdes Medical Bureau was established. About 7,000 people have sought to have their case confirmed as a ‘miracle’, of which only 68 have been declared a scientifically inexplicable ‘miracle’ by both the Bureau and the Catholic Church.

Because the apparitions are private revelation, and not public revelation, Roman Catholics are not required to believe them, nor does it add any additional material to the truths of the Catholic Church as expressed in public revelation. In Roman Catholic belief, God chooses whom He wants cured, and whom He does not, and by what means. Bernadette said, “One must have faith and pray; the water will have no virtue without faith.”

- Wikipedia
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1 Kings 11:4-13

When Solomon grew old his wives swayed his heart to other gods; and his heart was not wholly with the Lord his God as his father David’s had been. Solomon became a follower of Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians, and of Milcom, the Ammonite abomination. He did what was displeasing to the Lord, and was not a wholehearted follower of the Lord, as his father David had been. Then it was that Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the god of Moab on the mountain to the east of Jerusalem, and to Milcom the god of the Ammonites. He did the same for all his foreign wives, who offered incense and sacrifice to their gods.

The Lord was angry with Solomon because his heart had turned from the Lord the God of Israel who had twice appeared to him and who had then forbidden him to follow other gods; but he did not carry out the Lord’s order. The Lord therefore said to Solomon, ‘Since you behave like this and do not keep my covenant or the laws I laid down for you, I will most surely tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your servants. For your father David’s sake, however, I will not do this during your lifetime, but will tear it out of your son’s hands. Even so, I will not tear the whole kingdom from him. For the sake of my servant David, and for the sake of Jerusalem which I have chosen, I will leave your son one tribe.’
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Mark 7:24-30

Jesus left Gennesaret and set out for the territory of Tyre. There he went into a house and did not want anyone to know he was there, but he could not pass unrecognised. A woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him straightaway and came and fell at his feet. Now the woman was a pagan, by birth a Syrophoenician, and she begged him to cast the devil out of her daughter. And he said to her, ‘The children should be fed first, because it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the house-dogs.’ But she spoke up: ‘Ah yes, sir,’ she replied ‘but the house-dogs under the table can eat the children’s scraps.’ And he said to her, ‘For saying this, you may go home happy: the devil has gone out of your daughter.’ So she went off to her home and found the child lying on the bed and the devil gone.
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But the house-dogs under the table can eat the children’s scraps

I was very disturbed by what I witnessed recently in a shopping centre. As I was seated at a coffee joint enjoying my frappuccino a man suddenly appeared in front of the rubbish bin a few metres away from me and rummaged through the contents. My eyes widened when he stretched his hand in to extract out a half drunk cup of ice-blended coffee and started to drink from it. He was very happy with the taste and walked away beaming to himself much to the disgust of the people waiting around that area.

That incident is similar to the analogy that the Syrophoenician lady made in her reply to Jesus in today’s Gospel. I believe that Jesus came to minister to His own people, namely the Jews and it was left to the apostles to share the Good News to the Gentiles. However any Gentile who has faith and is willing to believe in the doctrine that Jesus was preaching would certainly not be denied eternal life that was lost by Adam.

We are privileged to hear the Word of God in our weekly worship and possess a treasure that others may not have. It is our duty to not hoard this treasure but share it with all around us. It is already bad if we choose not to share the love of God with those around us but I believe it is terrible if we become a counter-witness to others as what King Solomon did in the first reading. He became a follower of pagan gods in his old age and this resulted in the break-up of the kingdom that his father David had united.

We must live with the consequences of our decisions and they may often turn out to be far more severe that what we imagine it to be. I could have gone up to the man rummaging for a drink and buy him a proper meal but I did not. This meant that I lost the opportunity to allow God’s love to be experienced by this man. Let us take a moment to realise that what we do will certainly have an impact on our relationship with God; may we have the courage to reject all that makes this relationship distant.

(Today’s OXYGEN by Nicholas Chia)
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Prayer: Lord, please forgive us for the many times that we have failed to walk closer to You.

Thanksgiving: We give thanks for the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Upcoming Readings:
Fri, 12 Feb – 1 Kings 11:29-32;12:19; Mark 7: 31-37
Sat, 13 Feb – 1 Kings 12:26-32;13:33-34; Mark 8:1-10
Sun, 14 Feb – 1 Jeremiah 17:5-8; 1 Corinthians 15:12.16-20; Luke 6:20-26; Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time; Chinese New Year