Both of today’s gospel stories – the one about the little girl Jesus
brought back from the dead or apparent death, and the one about the
woman who suffered from the hemorrhages – are perfect illustrations of
the teaching set forth in the first reading from the Book of Wisdom:
that God is on the side of life, not death. It’s a teaching we need to
be reminded of as we deal with the death that’s all around us, the death
we can never seem to escape: our own death, the death of a loved one,
the death that comes from natural disasters, the death brought about by
war and poverty, and sometimes by nothing other than the sheer human
perversity that is so evident in all manner of mass shootings and
senseless gun violence.
All of which
prompts the question: if God is on the side of life, why so much death?
And the Book of Wisdom answers that question by taking us back to one of
the creation stories in Genesis, to that idyllic picture where all is
life and harmony, beauty and peace, until what the writer calls “the
envy of the devil” unleashes the scourge of sin and death. And nothing
is ever the same. But make no mistake about it: to quote the reading
from Wisdom, “God did not make death…God does not rejoice in the death
of the living, for God fashioned all things that they might have being.”
That they might have Life!
And this, my friends, is
where Jesus enters the picture. Jesus came not only to restore the
original order but to far surpass it. Jesus came to put death to flight,
by bringing life, life in abundance. In the two stories from Mark’s
gospel, death and life come face to face in the ministry of Jesus and in
each case, it’s life that gets the last word, not death. There is simply
no contest.
Take the woman who
suffered from hemorrhages. She was as good as dead. Mark says that she
had “been afflicted for twelve years, suffered greatly at the hands of
many doctors, spent all she had, yet was not helped, but only grew
worse.” A little aside: with all due respect for any of you who are
physicians, Mark seems to be having a little fun here at the expense of
doctors. He was poking fun at them because, for all the good they do,
they don’t have all the answers. I say that because, when Luke tells
this story in his gospel – Luke, the physician – he says not a word
about all the money wasted on doctors!
I won’t belabor the
point. It’s enough to observe that the poor woman was in dire straits.
But she had one thing going for her: her faith. She had heard about
Jesus and his healing powers and she believed that if she could just
touch the hem of his garment she would be healed. And she was right. Her
flow of blood dried up the moment she did.
But the story didn’t end
there, did it! The healing would have been enough, but she also got an
encounter with Jesus who clearly wanted this to be more than just an
anonymous display of his power. The woman must have been frightened to
death when Jesus asked who it was who had touched him, but he quickly
put her at ease and in their brief encounter, he opened up for her a
whole new horizon. He not only told her that it was her faith that had
saved her, he also called her “daughter.” That’s significant because
that’s the only time in all Mark’s gospel that Jesus uses language like
that. In calling her ‘daughter,’ Jesus was telling her that she was one
of his very own.
What was it about the
woman, I wonder, that led Jesus to do that? Was it the courage she
showed in reaching out to him as she did? Was it her hope, her obvious
faith? I don’t know. But this I do know: in calling her his daughter,
Jesus made her part of his family. He was telling her that the life she
received from him was the same life he received from his Father.
And now to the story
about the little girl, the daughter of Jairus, the synagogue official.
It’s a life and death story, too. But unlike the woman with the
hemorrhage who was as good as dead, this little girl apparently was dead
when Jesus finally arrived at the house. The people were weeping and
wailing, and when Jesus told them the girl was asleep, not dead, their
weeping and wailing turned to derisive laughter. They ridiculed him, we
are told. Jesus was unfazed. Serenely in charge, he gently took the
little girl by the hand and told her to get up. Did you notice that in
this story, much like in the story of the woman with the hemorrhages,
the healing – the meeting of life with death – involved touch? The woman
touched the hem of Jesus’ garment; Jesus took the little girl by the
hand. A word from Jesus would have sufficed but no, we got both: word
and touch.
My friends in Christ,
that healing touch of Jesus who came to destroy the power of death, that
healing touch of Jesus and his encouraging word are not only to be found
in the pages of the gospels: they are ours for the taking in the
sacramental life of the Church. We encounter them every time we
celebrate or receive one of the sacraments. In the sacraments there is
always touch and there are always words: from the flowing water and
words of Baptism, to the breaking of the Bread and the words of Jesus in
the Eucharist, to the laying on of hands in Reconciliation, Confirmation
and Ordination, to the Anointing of the Sick, to the joining of hands in
Matrimony – there is always touch and there are always words. And both
become channels of life – paths to life – amazing gifts from the God, in
Jesus, always leads us to life, abundant life!
That life is ours for
the taking right now in Jesus’ life-giving Word and in the sacrament of
his Body and Blood!
Father Michael G. Ryan
|
|
