THIRTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
29-30 June 2024 - St. John Paul II -
Harrisburg
Wis 1:13-15; 2:23-24
2 Cor 8:7, 9, 13-15
Mk
5:21-43 or 5:21-24, 35b-43
Praised be
Jesus Christ!
“She had heard
about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak. She
said, “If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured.”
“God
did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.”
The message of Scripture
for this 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time is a tough one, not because it
comes down hard condemning us for our lack of faith and consequently not living
up to Christian ideals, but because we miss the point of its teaching. The good
news of God’s boundless love for us His children goes right over our heads and
leaves us doubting whether Jesus would do the same for us and our loved ones,
as He did in the Gospel for the woman with hemorrhages that sapped her life and
wouldn’t heal us as He did her. We find it somewhere between hard and
impossible to imagine that Jesus, true God and true Man, would intervene on
behalf of our loved ones as He did for the couple whose young daughter died
before they could bring Jesus to their home to heal her.
My point is that it was not the strong
faith of the woman that healed her, nor the parents’ confidence in the power of
Jesus to raise their daughter from the dead that worked these miracles.
Desperation seems to reign supreme in both cases before Jesus takes charge, bringing
healing and life to the woman and to the young girl, confounding the mourners
and bringing peace and joy to loving parents. Very simply, here we are
confronted by the greatness of God’s unbounded love for us in Christ. On the
one hand we are challenged to recognize God’s mercy on us unworthy as we are,
and on the other to run to Him without hesitation confident that if we but ask
He will take care of the rest.
How does that
translate practically into our life of faith and prayer? What should be our
attitude as people of faith when it comes to asking the Lord for His favor, be
it for a good harvest, be it for rescuing us from difficulties which place our
family at risk, be it for cases of illness effecting family and friends, or
maybe even our own life?
We need to
contemplate on the eagerness of the Son of God to come to our aid as readily as
He described Himself really in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus is just
that way, He is in charge, He wins out over sin, sickness, and death. We are
challenged to let go of resignation and despair, to embrace the message of the
Gospel, and to trust and put our lives in the hands of the King of the
Universe.
I am not talking
about faith healing or something of that sort. There are many preachers of the
so-called prosperity gospel out there, who claim that the only thing standing
between us and health, wealth, and happiness is the weakness of our faith. They
are wrong. They need to go back to today’s passage from Mark’s Gospel and to the
constant teaching of the Church and know that our Almighty Lord can make
something good out of our terror and even of our desperation, if we but reach
out to touch Him as that poor woman did. Faith manifests itself here in humble
submission and trust in the God Who made us and saved us in Christ.
Already before
Christ, in prophecy the Old Testament Book of Wisdom stated clearly just who God
is and what is His Will for us whom He has favored with life and then in a much
fuller way in Christ with the promise of everlasting life with Him in heaven. “God
did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.”
In moments of
great sadness and vulnerability, we can stand there more or less helpless
before our fate. To cheer or console or lift up someone suffering in this way
is no easy task. Our general tendency is not to risk taking on the cost of
solidarity, of sharing someone else’s pain or desperation.
The dynamics of
Jesus’ healing the leper Mark 1:41-45 illustrates well how God works in the
face of another’s pain.
Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched
him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately the leprosy left
him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once,
saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to
the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony
to them.” But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the
word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in
the country; and people came to him from every quarter. [NRSV, Catholic Edition Bible: Holy
Bible (pp. 2745-2746). Catholic Bible Press. Kindle Edition.]
Officially, Jesus
rendered Himself unclean by touching that leper, but in point of fact He
manifest His power as God to save even from incurable illness.
The two great
Commandments are love of God and love of neighbor. If you took the pulse of
contemporary society and of most Catholics, you would discover that is where we
fall down on the job. Blame your cellphone all you want, but our estrangement
from our world for failure to live out the two great Commandments is what has
us condemned.
Take time each
day this week to contemplate Jesus there with that little girl on the bed and her
parents standing helplessly by! “Little girl, I say to you, arise!” The girl,
a child of twelve, arose immediately and walked around. At that they were
utterly astounded. He gave strict orders that no one should know this and said
that she should be given something to eat.
St. Paul challenged
his readers to open wide their hearts. We should do so too.
Praised be Jesus Christ!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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