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| The Healing of Jairus' Daughter, Flemish, Leuven ca. 1520–25, The Met, New York. |
I jumped with delight when I read the lectionary for this thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary time because in these four texts; the first and second readings, the psalm and the Gospel, we can see not only all of salvation history summarised for us, but also this summary we also see some of the essential beliefs of the Catholic faith.
The first reading from the book of Wisdom takes us right back to the beginning, to the time of Creation, to the time in the Garden of Eden and assures us:
God did not make death,
nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.
For he fashioned all things that they might have being;
If there is death in our world, therefore, if there are things that do us harm, it is not because God desires so, but solely because of the Devil, and man’s cooperation with him.
Let us listen to the words from the book of Wisdom again:
by the envy of the devil, death entered the world,
and they who belong to his company experience it.
If there is death in our world, therefore, if there are things that do us harm, it is not because God desires so, but solely because of the Devil, and man’s cooperation with him.
I have a confession to make. Before I entered the seminary, I was like many of my peers. We believed in God, but we did not really believe in the Devil, or there were ways in which we underestimated the Devil. This underestimation of the Devil is, of course, the observe of the domestication of God that we have effected for some decades now; but this is another matter. Over the course of the years in the seminary, in the periods of quiet reflection that the seminary affords, however, I came to realise that if we believe in God and His goodness, we must also believe that there is a force of evil in the world that causes so much pain. The Devil, my dear brothers and sisters, hates man, or as the Book of Wisdom teaches us, he envies man, and above all, he hates life. And he induces us to abandon life, which is life in God, and pulls us to spiral downward toward death.
But, as the Gospel of Saint John tells us, God so loved the world that He gave us his only son so that we may not perish, but have life eternal. And this is what we hear in the Psalm:
O LORD, you brought me up from the netherworld;
you preserved me from among those going down into the pit.
I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.
And how did He rescue us? By giving up His life on the Cross. And what is the Passion and the Cross of Our Lord, but the scene of one great, and indeed final, attempt at temptation? “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” Do not suffer the pain of the Cross, come down!
The Gospel Acclamation
today reads:
Our Savior Jesus Christ destroyed death and brought life to light through the Gospel.
Our Lord did indeed destroy death and the Gospel, or in other words, His good news, is that we too can cheat death, but this destruction of death requires that we too embrace the cross. This is perhaps the great lesson of the Cross, that there is no triumph over sin, without first embracing the Cross in our personal lives: whether it is the disabled child that we have to care for, or the aging parents, an abusive spouse, or knowing that we must not disobey the traffic rules, even though everyone else is, even though it means we will be late for work, for Mass, or wherever else we are going.
I would like to recollect the words of St. Paul to the Colossians (1:24):
in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.
Brothers and sisters, in the precious gift of the Eucharist, Christ gives us His body to eat, so that He may join our flesh with His, so that we may be able to withstand temptation and sin, and embrace the Cross with Him and so triumph over death and have life.
Just one more point before I conclude – I have been warned both by my mother and Pope Francis that I should keep my homily brief – if Christ has rescued us from death, why is it that we still die?
This, dear brothers and sisters, is the consequence of the sin of our first parents. Sin may be forgiven, that is to say, our relationship with God may be restored, but the consequences of sin must still be borne.
But when we say the Christ has triumphed over death, He does not mean merely the physical death of this body! Which is why He says to the mourners in Jairus’s house, she is not dead only asleep. We must remember that the early Christians were unique in the ancient world in their attitude to death; that they knew that the dead were merely asleep (hence our prayer, “May they [the faithful departed] rest in peace”).
The death we must fear is the second death, the death which will come at the time of the Final Judgement and the Resurrection of the physically dead, when the wicked shall have their recompense and not enjoy a relationship with God, which is life, true, everlasting life.
We have this one life, my dear brothers and sisters, to make sure that we lead holy and virtuous lives, so that we may merit from Christ’s sacrifice, so that we may embrace the Cross, and then at the end of time, enjoy life eternal with our God and King.
To help us on this journey, let us turn to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, on this, the last day of June, the month dedicated to thee devotion of this physical heart that burns with love for us and say:
Sacred Heart of Jesus, make our hearts like unto yours.
(A version of this homily was first preached to my home parish of Caranzalem on 30 June 2024.)
