Sunday Reflection with Fr Terry - 5 February 2012

Scripture is like a mirror held up in front of the human race. We see ourselves depicted. Of course, the Bible is the story of God revealing himself to us, but it is also a picture of who we are. Sadness and joy, generosity and selfishness, anger and peace, all human emotions can be found in scripture.

Take today's first reading from Job 7. It is a chillingly accurate description of serious depression. Sleep eludes Job. At night he restlessly longs for day to arrive, but then during the day he is longing for the night. It is a bleak, joyless time. Depression is like this. The sufferer from depression thinks the cloud will never lift, and is tempted to despair.

Recently Britain was shocked when Gary Speed, a handsome man with a successful career in sports and a beautiful family, took his own life. It reminded us that depression is an illness that can strike anybody. Those who struggle need to know that depression is just that - it is an illness, not a weakness, and medical help is available.

Job felt that he had lost everything that made life worth living. But he clung to his faith, clung to it grimly at times. It is important to note that Job's faith is shown as brutally honest. It allows him to ask why God tolerates a world in which the wicked flourish and the poor are left destitute and suffering. The honest, direct way that Job speaks to God is part of his strength, pouring out his anguish. This dialogue helps him to keep going until joy comes once more. It is a reminder to us that true prayer is not always a neat and pretty thing. We bring the whole of our life to God.

In our responsorial psalm today we praise God who heals the broken-hearted. There are times when hearts are broken and spirits are crushed, and at times like these we turn to a Saviour who went to the cross and knows from the inside the sorrows that sometimes afflict human life. At times like these, we pray all the harder.

In the gospel today (Mark 1.29-39) we glimpse Jesus at prayer. These little references to his prayer life slip past us almost unnoticed, like verse 35 where we read that long before dawn he rose and went to a lonely place to pray. You might think that the Son of God did not need prayer, but like us, he needed the strength, the consolation that comes from communion with the Father.

It is interesting, too, that we find him in prayer like this not only in difficult times but in other situations too. In fact, in the gospel we have just heard, he is setting out on his public ministry. He will be exposed to the critical, fickle public gaze, and to the hostile authorities. So he prays. He is beginning to realize his healing powers, and the sick are clamouring around him, a great and serious responsibility, so he prays.

Already there is admiration, which will bring its own temptations, and he prays. Later before choosing the inner circle of the Twelve, he will go apart to pray before naming them. And as we all remember, in Gethsemane, faced with the horror of a cross, he prays, that he may not falter. In good times and in bad, we would be wise to do as he does, and to pray.

Fr Terry is Parish Priest at St Mary's in Finchley East, north London. Fr Terry's latest book: Ronald Knox and English Catholicism is published by Gracewing at £12.99 and is available on Amazon, on ICN's front page. To read Sr Gemma Simmonds' review on ICN see: www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=1611