13th Sunday of Year B 2021

 

Thirteenth Sunday of Year (B)

(Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24.  2^nd. Corinthians 8:7-9, 13-15; Saint Mark 5:21-43)

 

Today’s Gospel emphasises the importance and the fruitfulness of a personal awareness of, and relationship with, Jesus.

We were told there, as you heard, that:  

When Jesus had crossed again (in the boat) to the other side (of the Sea of Galilee) a large crowd gathered around Him, and He stayed close to the sea.  One of the synagogue officials, named Jairus, came forward. Seeing Him, he fell at His feet and pleaded earnestly with Him, saying, “My daughter is at the point of death. Please, come lay your hands on her that she may get well and live.”  He went off with him, and a large crowd followed Him and pressed upon Him.

 

Now Saint John (John 4:46–48) has a similar story about a father seeking Jesus’ help for his son:

 

(Jesus) returned to Cana in Galilee, where He had made the water wine. Now there was a royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum.  When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to Him and asked Him to come down and heal his son, who was near death.   Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.” 

And so, the synagogue leader pressed through a large crowd surrounding Jesus by the sea and fell at Jesus’ feet; whereas, the royal official simply went to Jesus and asked Him.

The depth of Jairus’ faith was most clearly shown by his publicly falling at Jesus’ feet despite the general disapproval of Jesus by the Pharisees and their Scribes so active and important in the synagogue ‘movement’ so to speak.  That humble act of faith by Jairus could easily have cost him his reputation and authority in the synagogue.

The royal official, on the other hand, would seem to have simply approached Jesus privately and asked Him to heal his son, thereby meriting those words of Jesus:

            Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.

 As a result of that healing, however, Jesus’ name would be proclaimed in royal palaces that were no fit places for Jesus’ Personal preaching, which was for the poor and needy, the sick and lowly, but above all for the repentant and faithful.

Now let us look more closely at the woman who had suffered from hemorrhages for 12 years, an illness which had ritually prevented her from being able to worship in the temple and even, perhaps, in the local synagogue.

Like Jairus, she pushed through a crowd to get close to Jesus, but, because of the nature of her ailment, she made no public gesture.   Now desperate after many notable figures in medicine had failed her and cost all her money, and yet with a true faith in the holiness and power of Jesus -- the only One, she now realized, Who could possibly help her– she simply touched His cloak, possibly just the hem of that long garment.

That, however, was too much like magic for Jesus Who immediately made it known that He was acutely aware that someone had purposefully touched His garments.  He turned around to face the crowd, and looking deliberately at those nearest to Himself, He thus compelled the already deeply anxious and now most nervous woman to reveal herself to Him and make known the whole truth.

Jesus then said to her both privately and ‘sotto voce’:

Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease.

Oh, Lord Jesus, gentle and accommodating Saviour, how true of You are those prophetic words (Sirach 42:21–23):

Perennial is His almighty wisdom; He is from all eternity one and the same, no need of a counselor for Him! How beautiful are all His works even to the spark and the fleeting vision!

Yes, dear People of God, that was but a momentary incident absolutely unknown to the crowd, and even now -- for us recalling it to our memory -- it is but a very short glimpse of Jesus’ tender solicitude, “Daughter, your faith has made you well”, and gentle encouragement, “go in peace and be healed of your disease”, for a woman so long alone, anxious, and so deeply embarrassed.  There were very few people to whom Jesus could have shown that aspect of His humanity and divine love: for Jairus in his moment of trial it was simply “Do not be afraid; just have faith”; for the daughter of Jairus, it was “Talitha koumi, little girl arise”; while for both parents, it was that very practical advice, “Give her something to eat”.

What about you, my dear fellow Catholics and Christians?  Has Jesus, has God, ever spoken, whispered, words of importance, or tender concern, words of guidance both encouraging and possibly life-changing, to you?  If so, then treasure those words for the rest of your life, for they were and are words of life for you.

If not? Why not, do you think?  All I can say is that such words of Jesus are expressions of a certain closeness, loving concern, intimate awareness.  If you have never heard the like yourselves that cannot be Jesus’, God’s, fault: we have all just heard that Jesus on earth did speak to some people in such a way, and we all know that God our Father in heaven and the Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts, are capable and do want to be that close to us, for us: Jesus is our Saviour, God is our Father, the Paraclete is the Spirit given us expressly to divinize us and whisper in our very hearts!!  And yet you have heard nothing, never sensed anything, somehow never even thought or guessed that Jesus, the Father, or the Spirit within you has ever said or intimated anything to you for your guidance and help??

In such a situation I must just urge you never to forget those words of Jesus to the woman of Samaria:

God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.   (John 4:24)

Those are words to think on, work at, and above all, pray over.  For the Holy Spirit given us makes us Christians, and He ever recalls Jesus’ teaching, for Jesus said ‘I am the Truth’.  And the relationship He, the Spirit, establishes in us, Faith, is a P/personal relationship : a relationship, on our part, of humble obedience; a relationship of steadfast, ever-clinging-on, trust; a relationship of heart-warming and supremely committed love.  A relationship on God's side expressed by a most loving Fatherly embrace, and an invitation to sit at the table set for the heavenly  feast of God's family and kingdom.

12th Sunday Year B 2021

 

 

Twelfth Sunday of Year (B)

(Job 38: 1, 8-11; Second Corinthians 5:14-17; Saint Mark 4:35-41)

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Our first reading spoke dramatically of God’s almighty power, and our Blessed Lord Jesus in the Gospel reading exercised that power in a dramatic way: rebuking the raging wind and waves of Lake Galilee.

The great calm that ensued was not, however, matched by calmness in the hearts of His disciples, for Jesus seems to have rebuked them for still trembling with fear at the memory of the storm’s threat:

            Why are you terrified?  Do you not yet have faith?

Experiencing fear on being caught in a small boat on one of Galilee’s occasional storms was understandable even for native fishermen who, of course, knew of the Lake’s propensity to storm winds coursing down suddenly from the surrounding heights; but such fear after Jesus had calmed the waters is hardly understandable in such professional fishermen: they lived by, from, their daily fishing of the fruit of those waters of Galilee.

We would have expected Jesus to say, ‘Why were you terrified’.   Jesus must therefore have had a special reason for using a word that – to us – seems strange; and such a reason must – knowing Jesus – involve TEACHING.

‘Why are you terrified?’ ... would seem to have meant for Jesus what it can mean for us today:

            “Why do you allow yourselves to be terrified?”;

and such an understanding makes Jesus subsequent words not only perfectly understandable but also pregnant with most important teaching:

‘Why do you who should have faith – whom I have called to faith -- allow yourselves to be so overcome by fear?

Jesus is saying:

Supernatural faith is a means, a weapon, to fight against and even to destroy incipient natural fear.  Why are you so slow to learn?

People of God, this is most important teaching:  Faith is not merely knowledge, an awareness that Jesus is God our Saviour; it is ordained to become a power in our lives: a power to form us ever more and more in obedience to and in the likeness of Jesus, by the power of His Most Holy Spirit bestowed on us originally in Confirmation and renewed in our reception of the ‘daily’ Holy Eucharist. 

Catholics who only know their faith are beginners only; that faith has to gradually come to rule in our lives through prayer, through our own deliberate and willing, hoping and beseeching, application of it to our problems and questions, our desires and our aspirations.

 And this applies above all to Jesus’ supreme desire -- in life and death --to reveal and make known to us His Father:

            This is how you are to pray:

            Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Thy name,

            Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven ....

Dear People of God, that word ‘Father’ – meaning the God Who made us and Who sent His Son to become flesh of the Virgin for our salvation – should be, should become, by our deliberate prayer, thinking, consideration, longing and beseeching, sublimely meaningful and supremely precious to us.  Jesus even advised us as He was nearing His Passion and Death (Matthew 23:9):

Call no one on earth your father; you (My disciples) have but one Father, (and He is) in heaven.

Did Mary tell Jesus as He was growing up about the manner of His conception and birth?  Surely not!!  She would just have used the normal word ‘Father’ for Joseph’s relationship to Jesus: ‘Your Father and I have sought you ...’

Jesus, however, learned, knew – even better than Mary herself -- by His prayer WHO really was His true Father, WHO was really and truly responsible for His very Being, not just responsible for His upbringing as son of Mary of Nazareth, and for His training as a carpenter.

Our baptism as Catholics, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, has – as St. Paul most insistently tells us – made us a new creation, we are not just flesh and blood, human and mortal; we are children of God, living in the womb of Mother Church an incipiently divine life, to be fed and nourished by the Food of God.

THAT is our only real life, our incipiently eternal, heavenly, and glorious LIFE; and That is why Jesus again uses apparently strange words, because they are both pregnant with divine truth and most significant for our establishment of our own character, the persons we want to be and the persons Jesus promises we can become in Him by His Spirit: children of God not merely children of men.

“Do you not yet have faith?”  Jesus said ‘not yet’ because the disciples had already seen many striking miracles of healing performed by Himself, heard Him both discomfit the scribes and Pharisees with His authoritative understanding of the Law and His Lordship over the Sabbath, and had also themselves  been charmed with His ability to satisfy large and pressing crowds of simple, unlearned, country people with beautiful parables redolent of a wisdom that was both human and divine.

The disciples knew so much about Jesus, they believed what He told them, but such knowledge and belief was not enough .... the disciples had to introduce, draw, that knowledge, that belief, into their hearts, so that that knowledge might be transformed from mere ideas and notions, to become motives powerful enough to transform their intentions, aspirations, and indeed their whole lives.

Dear People of God, that is also our life purpose and meaning: we are not called to be just believers, we have also to become ‘practitioners’ of our faith in our lives, in all those nooks and crannies we can so easily or fearfully overlook.

May God bless you all in that most holy and life-fulfilling, pursuit.

 

 

11th Sunday of Year B 2021

 

 11^th. Sunday of Year B

(Ezekiel 17:22-24; 2 Corinthians 5:6-10; Mark 4:26-34)

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Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

 

In our reading from the prophet Ezekiel – copying perhaps the Assyrian emperors so keen to boast of their military prowess -- there was a beautiful metaphor of one climbing right to the very crest of a choice cedar and finally stretching with his fingers to separate out and pluck a most delicate and promising growth:

 

I will take from the crest of the cedar, from its topmost branches crop off, a tender shoot.

 

Thus, the prophet pictured God’s sublime millennia-long nourishment and formation of Israel, the cedar of His planting, with the Blessed Virgin Mary of Nazareth as its crest – the summit of Israel’s response to such divine nurturing – finally taking to Himself and making His very Own that unique Shoot which only she could bear.

 

Concerning that Shoot of the Virgin, Ezekiel goes on to say:

 

The tender shoot shall put forth branches and bear fruit and become a magnificent cedar.  Birds of every kind shall dwell beneath it in the shade of its boughs.

And our Blessed Lord’s own parable confirms those prophetic words, speaking this time of the Kingdom of God which He inaugurated in His very own Self, and using the same imagery of fruitful maturity, unobservable to human scrutiny, yet ultimately giving shelter and succour to those in need:

 

 

It is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.

 

And so, dear People of God, after a series of feasts and solemnities, each emphasizing a distinct and striking aspect of the beauty of Catholic doctrine, it is most ‘homely’ and satisfying to celebrate an ‘ordinary’ Sunday which puts before us, with items chosen from her Scriptures ‘old and new’, something of the wholesome unity of Mother Church, and something of the calm strength and beauty of  ‘ordinary’ Catholicism: a Catholicism to quietly savour and admire as one appreciates a daily companion, cherishes a constant hope, and finds strength and peaceful joy in what is normal, everyday, and fundamental.

 

Today, people are not sufficiently aware, I believe, that a very large proportion of mankind’s troubles, be they criminal or personal, arise from sinful humanity’s unwillingness to appreciate and accept, let alone find peaceful fulfillment in, the ‘ordinary’.  The young hate boredom and crave the excitement of ‘highs’.  Those of middle-age need distractions, interests of any sort, conversations with all and sundry – even broad and wide over the media -- to occupy their minds and prevent self-introspection, lest the time on their hands brings back memories of past sins, trials and missed opportunities, stirs embers of regret or traces of old antipathies and dislikes, or, allows apparently long-forgotten memories -- silenced for some time but not healed -- come close to the surface once again: memories of friends, or responsibilities, failed due to our fault.  Too many of those who are old, however, just worry: about the past, the present, and the future; or else while-away the time still allotted them in passing interests of no moment, in reveries about days of old no longer available to them.

 

People of God, there is no real, true, happiness or fulfilment without an appreciation of and gratitude for, the ordinary in life: especially for us Catholics and Christians who proclaim the enduring, daily, goodness of God in all that He ordains for our gradual development into children of His; children destined to partake of the wedding feast He is preparing for all those His beloved Self-sacrificing Son brings with Him.

 

And what could be more ordinary and homely concerning the spiritual life of all devout Catholics than those words of St. Paul in our second reading:

 

            Therefore, we aspire to please Him, whether we are at home or away?

 

We aspire to please Him, that is, even though we are not yet at home with the Lord in heaven, even though we walk by faith, not by sight.

 

We aspire to please Him: how simple that sounds!  Just right for an ‘ordinary’ Sunday reading and homily … no burdensome thinking required, no great obligations to be accepted, we are encouraged to simply try to please Him, Jesus our Lord and Saviour, or as Jesus Himself would insist, we try to please Him Who is our loving Father, Who wants to be our beloved Father.  Such simplicity does not in any way threaten the richness of your Sunday spiritual food; because in order to ‘please Him’ we need to know Him, know what He wills, or even what He prefers for our good …. Just as you take pride in knowing the likings and possible preferences of your family and the guests who may be gathered around your Sunday table.

 

We walk by faith, not by sight:  how clear that sounds also, not frightening in any way!   And yet by walking in that way we are dying to ourselves for love of Him! There is no greater spirituality than that!!

 

People of God, thank you for listening to, reading, following, me carefully.  Please, try to enjoy your Sunday, and ask God to help you appreciate His daily, ordinary, gifts … not forgetting His gift of everyday time … for they all ultimately express the same undying love for you that led Him to give up His Son – to death alone on the Cross for you -- so as to be able to lift up with Him all who walk by faith in Him.