FULLNESS OF LIFE

 13^TH SUNDAY ORDINARY TIME – B

Mark 5:21-43

PODCAST: Australian Catholic Radio Online:
http://cradio.org.au/talks-and-resources/homilies/fr-vladimir-echalas-solt/13th-sunday-ordinary-time/ 

      How does our faith make a difference in the most difficult moments of our life?  Where does faith bring us when we are at the end of our strength, when our feet bring us at the end of the road facing an abyss?

      In the gospel this Sunday, we have two miracles interwoven with each other by faith.  Jairus’ twelve year old daughter was dead and the woman was suffering with hemorrhage for twelve years.  Jesus, being the Master of life, showed His power and mercy in response to the faith of Jairus and the woman.  It was not just about physical resuscitation nor cure, it was about encountering the Divine that led to salvation.

      Jairus asked Jesus to “lay your hands on her that she may be saved and may live.”   On the other hand the woman believed that “if I can just touch his clothes, I shall be saved.”  Jairus and the woman without them knowing it, were looking for salvation though from different levels and perspectives.    Both of them were looking for a physical cure.   Yet Jesus was offering more than they were asking for: salvation through the cure.   Jesus brought them to an encounter which would elicit their faith response.   This encounter brought Jairus and the woman in a dialogue with the Author of life.  Without this dialogue, the two miracles would only be physical healing devoid of the extraordinary dimension of true salvation.  It was in this dialogue that Jesus brought Jairus and the woman in a crescendo of faith from something primitive, magical and superstitious to something organic and transcendental.  Because of faith, Jesus brought Jairus’ daughter and the woman back into the fullness of life.

      When we reflect miracle stories like Jairus’ daughter and the woman in the gospel today, it is not just reading dead texts that appeal to the imagination.  It is different from reading a short story or a novel, fiction or true, spectacular they may be.   The miracles in the Gospel bid us to enter into the depth of the story and we become part of it, not just as readers or listeners, but active participants as we re-live it and suddenly it becomes alive.  If this is true, then how do we see ourselves in the story this Sunday?

      Are you at the end of your rope? Gasping your last breath? Nearly giving up?  Or just a mere spectator to life as it unfolds in the drama of your family and friends or people around you?  Do we  need to experience the end of life’s road before we finally realize that we are not in control but God?  Do we really need a tragedy in life before we start believing that God is real?

      Or is it in the ordinariness of life when we practice our faith that we encounter God in each other.  It is in the celebration of life when we could say that through our pain, God is also in pain; through our laughter, we hear the laughter of God! 

St. Irenaeus says “The glory of God is man fully alive!”