On the one hand, Jesus truly reveals to us a God who accepts us as we are, with all our illnesses, needs, psychological difficulties, and childhood complexes, regardless of our merits or our unworthiness. All this is true, as is the fact that...
On the one hand, Jesus truly reveals to us a God who accepts us as we are, with all our illnesses, needs, psychological difficulties, and childhood complexes, regardless of our merits or our unworthiness. All this is true, as is the fact that, through faith and striving toward God, many problems are sometimes resolved, illnesses are healed, or we, which is no less valuable, become able to look at all these hardships of life differently - as people say, through God's own eyes - to understand their meaning and draw benefit from them. And without doubt this last thing too can be included in what today's Gospel passage calls "healings," if by them we mean divine actions through which our mind, our whole life, though far from ideal, begins to acquire a certain wholeness, and we gain the ability to rise above oppressive problems and grasp something new and unexpected about life and about God.
On the other hand, one gets the impression that, despite the huge number of healing scenes and other miracles in the Gospel, Mark, following the Spirit and Jesus' intentions, wanted to say something more. Recovery or changes for the better may happen or may not happen, although in any case hope for the better remains. Yet in the depths of all these hopes or disappointments there lies a call addressed to every person: to look to the root and try to receive with one's whole being that suffering and distress are synonyms of human life. And overcoming them is possible only by shifting our attention from our own "sores" to the suffering and pain of other people, as Jesus did. For sharing in the suffering of others can act as an anesthetic for our own, and at the same time helps make life more bearable and, most important, not deprived of consolations and of joy shared with others.
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4:8 Indeed then when ye knew not God, ye served them that by nature - That is, in reality. Are no gods - And so were under a far worse bondage than even that ofthe Jews. For they did serve the true God, though in a low, slavish manner.
4:9 But now being known of God - As his beloved children. How turn ye back to the weak and poor elements - Weak, utterly unable to purge your conscience from guilt, orto give that filial confidence in God. Poor - incapable of enriching the soul with such holiness and happiness as ye are heirs to. Ye desire to be again in bondage - Though of another kind; now to these elements, as before to those idols.
4:10 Ye observe days - Jewish sabbaths. And months - New moons. And times - As that of the passover, pentecost, and the feast of tabernacles. And years - Annual solemnities.it does not mean sabbatic years. These were not to be observed out of the land of Canaan.
4:11 The apostle here, dropping the argument, applies to the affections, Gal 4:11-20, and humbles himself to the Galatians, with an inexpressible tenderness.
4:12 Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am - Meet me in mutual love. For I am as ye were - I still love you as affectionately as ye once loved me. Why should I not? Ye have not injured me at all - I have received no personal injury from you.
4:13 I preached to you, notwithstanding infirmity of the flesh - That is, notwithstanding bodily weakness, and under great disadvantage from the despicableness of my outward appearance.
4:14 And ye did not slight my temptation - That is, ye did not slight or disdain me for my temptation, my "thorn in the flesh."
4:15 What was then the blessedness ye spake of - On which ye so congratulated one another.
4:17 They - The judaizing teachers who are come among you. Zealously affect you - Express an extraordinary regard for you. But not well - Their zeal is not according to knowledge; neither have they a single eye to your spiritual advantage. Yea, they would exclude you - From me and from the blessings of the gospel. That ye might affect - Love and esteem them.
4:18 In a good thing - In what is really worthy our zeal.True zeal is only fervent love.
4:19 My little children - He speaks as a parent, both with authority, and the most tender sympathy, toward weak and sickly children. Of whom I travail in birth again - As I did before, Gal 4:13, in vehement pain, sorrow, desire, prayer.Till Christ be formed in you - Till there be in you all the mind that was in him.
4:20 I could wish to be present with you now - Particularly in this exigence. And to change - Variously to attemper.My voice - He writes with much softness; but he would speak with more. The voice may more easily be varied according to the occasion than a letter can. For I stand in doubt of you - So that I am at a loss how to speak at this distance.
4:21 Do ye not hear the law - Regard what it says.