13 February 2026 – Friday of the 5th week in Ordinary Time
1 Kings 11:29–32, 12:19; Mark 7:31–37
HOMILY
The Gospels rarely show us Jesus outside the territory of Israel. In the passages from the Gospel of Mark that we have read these days, Jesus had gone to the region of Tyre, north of the Sea of Galilee. It was a border region with a mixed population, mostly pagan in religion. It was there that he healed the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman. And at the beginning of today's text, we see him leaving Tyre, passing through Sidon, heading towards the Sea of Galilee and going directly into pagan territory, into the federation of ten cities known as the Decapolis.