Homily for 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
13th Sunday of Ordinary Time

June 27, 2021
Wis 1: 13-15; 2: 23-24
Mark 5: 21-43
Holy Name of Jesus, New Rochelle, N.Y.

“God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him” (Wis 2: 23).

Jesus raises Jairus's daughter

(James Tissot)

The Book of Wisdom strongly emphasizes that death is not part of God’s plan for his creatures, that God wants humans, in particular, “to be imperishable.”  If we’re created in God’s own image, as Genesis affirms and our 1st reading restates, how could we not be destined to live forever?

Wisdom blames the Devil, whose envy and hatred for goodness brought death into the world.  If you hate God, you hate goodness, truth, and beauty, and you want to make all creatures as ugly, deceptive, and evil as you are.  That’s one of the themes in the Star Wars and Harry Potter stories.

The Devil succeeded in bringing death and all manner of evil into the world, in corrupting many a human heart by tricking us into worshipping wealth, pleasure, power, and our own egos rather than God.  “They who belong to his company experience death” (Wis 2:24) because they chase false gods; they worship themselves.

The whole Old Testament tells that story, and so does a great deal of ordinary history, the stories of cruel empires and egomaniac tyrants; of mobsters, slave traders, drug lords, people who sell out their country, and abortionists (purveyors of death, enemies of the innocent).

Into our deadly world stepped Jesus of Nazareth.  He came to restore the lively world created by God.  Our gospel reading this morning shows him at work thru 2 unexplainable healings, one more powerful than the other.  St. Mark, a master storyteller, cleverly weaves one healing into the narrative about the other, holding us in suspense by the interruption and then leading us to a climax.

The 1st healing involves a woman suffering terribly from uncontrollable hemorrhages, and impoverished by her search for a medical cure.  She’s without hope, desperate; so she risks sneaking up to Jesus in the crowd.  She’s unclean because of her bleeding, and she dare not come directly, openly, any more than a leper would.

"She had heard about Jesus" (Mark 5:27), but she doesn’t know Jesus well, obviously.  Lepers do come to him, and he welcomes every kind of social outcast who seeks him out.  He heals this woman too embarrassed to face him, hears her story, pronounces peace upon her.

That can be our story, too.  No matter what our unclean, sinful condition, our shame, our fear, our reputation—Jesus is waiting eagerly for us, to touch us with forgiveness.  As the woman “told him the whole truth” (5:33), we can bring our sins to Jesus, who sacramentally desires to tell us, “Your faith has saved you.  Go in peace and be cured of your affliction” (5:34).  Go to confession and be reconciled to God thru Jesus our Savior.

The story that was interrupted concerns the daughter of the synagog official, a mere child of 12.  She’s not sick, not dying.  She's dead, and everyone around her knows it.  Jesus doesn’t do CPR.  He just “takes her by the hand” and addresses her, “Little girl, I say to you, arise!” (5:41).

Which is what he desires to say to each of us, by name, on the Last Day.  He came to bring us back to life, the life we forfeited by our dalliance with the Devil, by our sins.  He came to raise us from our graves as he rose on Easter.

When we place our trust in him, we can sing, we will sing on Judgment Day, like the Psalmist:

“I will extol you, O Lord, for you drew me clear and did not let my enemies rejoice over me.  O Lord, you brought me up from the netherworld; you preserved me from among those going down into the pit.  O Lord, my God, forever will I give you thanks.” (Ps 30:2,4,13).