5th February, 2006

WAKEY, WAKEY!

I have a suspicion that my parents brought a secret about me to their graves. On my birth certificate it says that I was born in Dublin, Ireland, but I’ve always had doubts. I know it might be difficult to explain, since to the best of my knowledge my mother was never in the States until the 1980’s, but there is convincing evidence that I was born somewhere out in the mid-Atlantic. “What evidence?”, you might ask, and I would answer, “my body-clock!”. You see, it’s approximately three hours out of sync with Ireland – when everybody else is going to sleep I’m still generally three hours away from heading for the land of nod, and, more significantly, as everybody else is tucking into cornflakes, or whatever, I just want to turn over and enjoy the snugness and warmth of my foetal position for a little longer.

So you will appreciate that this has not been the best of weeks for me – even if I did spend much of it in Ireland. To get there on Monday I had to be up at some ungodly hour of the morning in order to get to Beauvais in time to catch my flight. On Tuesday I had to do the same, in order to cross the city in time for my scheduled meetings. Thursday saw me staggering out once again into the darkness, after only ten of the requisite forty winks, in order to catch the flight back to France, and six o’clock on Friday morning saw me bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at Charles de Gaulle airport to meet an incoming flight. Saturday was almost a dawdle after all that, as seven o’clock was sufficient time to get up and be prepared to travel to the Confirmation retreat.

So I get some comfort from today’s Gospel. Like myself this week, Jesus was up ‘long before dawn’, only He was heading off to a lonely place to pray. But there’s no sign of His apostles until later. If they heard Him leaving the house I can easily picture them turning over with a grunted ‘what’s His hurry? Let Him go, we’ll catch up with Him later.’

But ‘hurry’ is what the Jesus of St. Mark’s gospel is all about. We’re still only in chapter one, and already we have had His being baptised by John in the Jordan, His forty days in the desert, and being tempted by Satan; He has recruited His first apostles, preached in the synagogue and cast out spirits and healed many who were sick with various diseases. And now He is going ‘all through Galilee’. This Jesus is not hanging about – He seems in a rush to get on with His mission.

And why wouldn’t He? How often do we use the phrase ‘I can’t wait ….’ when we’re really looking forward to something. And His mission, should He accept it, was to demonstrate the fullness of His love for us, by giving His very life for us. And He wasn’t prepared to hang around waiting for us to waken up, as it were. Maybe it’s time for us to get our lives, our values, in sync with His. Keeping Him in sight means we don’t have to go out searching for Him later. There’s a better reason than being ‘healthy, wealthy and wise’ for getting out of bed!