The community of the followers of Jesus has a calling to bring healing to this world full of suffering. They are to go about it by means of service: just as Simon’s mother-in-law did, they are to use their healing from Jesus as an opening to serve others. They are to be like Paul, making themselves all things to all people, the slaves of all.

The Catholic Church challenges us to hunger and thirst for what is right so that, like God, we might fill the hungry with good things.

Especially through his life-style and through his actions, Jesus revealed that love is present in the world in which we live—an effective love, a love that addresses itself to man and embraces everything that makes up his humanity. This love makes itself particularly noticed in contact with suffering, injustice and poverty—in contact with the whole historical “human condition,” which in various ways manifests man’s limitations and frailty, both physical and moral.

Pope John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia1980: 3.     

Gerald Darring      https://liturgy.slu.edu