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Running on Faith: Immediately

Both ends

It seems to always happen that the most sacred times in the Church year coincide with the busiest times in our lives. Just as during Advent, when we pray for “the resolve to run forth to meet Christ with righteous deeds at his coming,” we’re nearing the end of the semester and burning the candle at both ends with final exams, papers and projects. And many of us must run on faith.Having prepared throughout the forty days of Lent to plunge with Christ into passion, death and resurrection, the Church now gives us fifty days to celebrate the joy of the Easter Season and strive to live each day in the light of the resurrection. One of the central themes of this sacred season between the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus, and then the feast of Pentecost, is responding to Christ’s call to “GO into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). Each of us have a role to play in continuing Christ’s mission of preaching, teaching, healing and sanctifying in our little section of the world. And each of us already has a lot to do.

And as the Scripture passages we’ve been reading/listening to this week seem to be telling us, there’s an urgency to both the mission and our response. On Tuesday the Church celebrated the Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist. He was not one of the eleven remaining Apostles who received the great commission directly from Christ before he ascended into Heaven. Although he may never have met Jesus in the flesh, through his close collaboration with St. Peter, and perhaps even St. Paul, he was definitely caught up in the mission, and he fulfilled the mission of proclaiming the Gospel to the whole world by writing his gospel account. I picture St. Mark burning the candle at both ends, preaching, casting out demons and healing the sick by day, then, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, chipping away at the Gospel that would become the most transformative story ever told, by night. And if his fast-paced, nearly breathless usage of the Greek phrase kaì euthùs (which means “and immediately” or “and just then”) thirty-nine times as he told the story of Jesus is any indicator, Mark knew that there was an urgency to Jesus’s mission. There was no time for Jesus to hold back or be slowed down by reluctance and slackness. All was a blessed “immediateness.” For Mark, that’s what Jesus was about – and that’s what Jesus expects from his followers. That’s what Jesus expects from us.

With all the demands that are being placed on us, even when we are tired from burning the candle at both ends, let’s “cast all [our] worries upon [God] because he cares for [us]” (1 Peter 5:7) and “GO proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” Immediately.

Fr. Ryan Lerner, Chaplain

Fr. Ryan Lerner, Chaplain

Fr. Ryan Lerner is Yale's 8th Catholic Chaplain.