You may have heard the saying that a person is known by the company they keep. What are we to make of the company that Jesus kept described for us in Luke’s gospel today? The twelve were with Him, an assortment of individuals, fishermen, tax collectors, ordinary people. Some were women who had been cured of evil spirits.
Other women spoken of had other ailments, but no descriptions were given except for Mary the Magdalene who possessed seven demons but was cured. She brought to mind Our Lady of Sorrows we acknowledged yesterday who endured seven wounds and bore them with dignity. Lastly, women who provided financial supported for Jesus and the twelve.
I invite us to ponder these ordinary people because they like some of us also experienced struggles, temptations, impatience, and maybe even got angry with God on occasion. Do you think all those ordinary people who surrounded Jesus were free of what I just enumerated? I doubt it, but here they were, renewed, regenerated. They had arisen from ashes much like Jesus had risen from the dead. His resurrection did that for them and also what it does for us.
What will it take to prove that no matter how smart we are, how rich we are, we will never be immune from the challenges that life brings. However, there is someone who can, and does, offer us a way out of this valley of tears. All those persons spoken of in the gospel who surrounded Jesus are proof of this.
In his writings, Venerable Father Peyton said of Mary, she was an ordinary person who manifested extraordinary wonders and being ordinary put no barriers in her way. Nor does being ordinary put any barriers in our way when we turn our lives over to the care of God.
Saint Paul was at pains to explain the resurrection of Christ to the people of Corinth. Not all of them needed proof because they held fast to that which Christ taught and did what Christ did.
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