JUNE 28^th 2015.  THIRTEENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

GOSPEL: Mark 5:21-43

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...

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GOSPEL: Mark 5:21-43

When Jesus had crossed in the boat to the other side, a large crowd gathered round him and he stayed by the lakeside. Then one of the synagogue officials came up, Jairus by name, and seeing him, fell at his feet and pleaded with him earnestly, saying, ‘My little daughter is desperately sick. Do come and lay your hands on her to make her better and save her life.’ Jesus went with him and a large crowd followed him; they were pressing all round him.

Now there was a woman who had suffered from a haemorrhage for twelve years; after long and painful treatment under various doctors, she had spent all she had without being any the better for it, in fact, she was getting worse. She had heard about Jesus, and she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his cloak. ‘If I can touch even his clothes,’ she had told herself ‘I shall be well again.’ And the source of the bleeding dried up instantly, and she felt in herself that she was cured of her complaint. Immediately aware that power had gone out from him Jesus turned round in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ His disciples said to him, ‘You see how the crowd is pressing round you and yet you say, “Who touched me?” But he continued to look all round to see who had done it. Then the woman came forward, frightened and trembling because she knew what had happened to her, and she fell at his feet and told him the whole truth. ‘My daughter,’ he said ‘your faith has restored you to health; go in peace and be free from your complaint.’

While he was still speaking some people arrived from the house of the synagogue official to say, ‘Your daughter is dead: why put the Master to any further trouble?’ But Jesus had overheard this remark of theirs and he said to the official, ‘Do not be afraid; only have faith.’ And he allowed no one to go with him except Peter and James and John the brother of James. So they came to the official’s house and Jesus noticed all the commotion, with people weeping and wailing unrestrainedly. He went in and said to them, ‘Why all this commotion and crying? The child is not dead, but asleep.’ But they laughed at him. So he turned them all out and, taking with him the child’s father and mother and his own companions, he went into the place where the child lay. And taking the child by the hand he said to her, ‘Talitha, kum!’ which means, ‘Little girl I tell you to get up.’  The little girl got up at once and began to walk about, for she was twelve years old. At this they were overcome with astonishment, and he ordered them strictly not to let anyone know about it, and told them to give her something to eat.
The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . The Gospel relates the stories of two female characters. The twelve-year old daughter of Jairus is dying, whilst the woman with the twelve year haemorrhage is seeking a cure. These two characters represents two ways in which we seek to resolve problems on the basis of purely human capacities. Jairus is the head of the Jewish assembly. The Jewish Law represents an attempt to achieve righteousness and salvation by gritting our teeth and coercing ourselves to follow precepts faithfully. The woman with the haemorrhage has spent all her money on medical experts who would have used the best of human wisdom to treat her problem. But neither human volition nor human wisdom can bring salvation in these cases. Jesus enters the scene and immediately brings life and healing, granting these two women the capacity to realise their true potentials and achieve their true identities. How do I approach life? Do I grit my teeth and try to be morally coherent on the basis of my own efforts? Do I seek to organise my life purely around my own capacities, talents, intelligence or qualifications? Do I base my identity on my physical wellbeing, on the judgements of purely human “experts” in the areas of health or beauty? Neither my own willpower nor human attempts at wellbeing can bring me life and healing! We must call on Lord and seek to touch him, as Jairus and the woman with the haemorrhage did! We need Jesus to enter our lives and order us to arise, so that we learn to ground our existence wholly on him.

Jairus is the head of the Jewish assembly. The fact that he cannot help his daughter is symbolic of the fact that the old Law could not bring life. It could only diagnose the world’s problems. Jesus represents the inbreaking of life and grace into the world.

The first reading asserts that death does not come from God. Everything God does is directed towards life. Death is the offspring of evil, the product of the envy of the devil. God created humanity for incorruptibility. The Gospel reading presents two female characters to us: one is a girl of twelve years old on the point of death; the other is a woman who has been in a physical state of corruption for twelve years - the occurrence of the number twelve is very significant here. Evidently God’s life-giving plan (as expressed in the first reading) is not coming to fruition in the world. The father of the girl is Jairus, the head of the synagogue. He asks Jesus to perform a very definite act on his daughter – the laying on of hands. This is a symbolic gesture that is very typical of fatherhood and represents the act of the father passing on his goods to his sons. In this case, Jairus is unable to pass on life to his daughter because she is dying. So we have a situation where the head of the synagogue asks Jesus to take his place and perform the life-giving act of laying on of hands on one of his children. This is highly significant. The leader of the Jewish assembly has no solution for the situation confronting his daughter. The ancient religion, based on the Law, has no capacity to save life. It is only the eruption of Jesus into the world that can effect the transition from law to grace. The Jewish Law only had the capacity to diagnose the world’s problems; it could say whether a person was acting righteously or not, but it could not change anyone’s situation.

The woman with the haemorrhage has spent all her money on doctors but she has only become more ill. The wisdom of this world does not bring life either. Only the touch of Jesus can heal us interiorly, helping us to realize our true identity and full potential

At the same time, we have a story within a story. The woman with the haemorrhage is trying to resolve her problem. She has spent all of her money on doctors, but her situation has only worsened. She has discovered that the wisdom and medicine of this world do not save but lead to ruin. Jesus supersedes the old religion, represented by the head of the synagogue, and also supersedes human wisdom, represented by the doctors. Neither religiosity nor worldly wisdom can bring healing; what is needed is to touch the Lord Jesus. He brings life to the house of Jairus, even when the girl is already dead. For as long as we are focussed on structures and solutions that remain at the horizontal level of this world, we are at nothing. Our religious efforts, arising from our own acts of volition and attempts at following Jesus on the basis of our own capacities, take us nowhere. We need the Lord Jesus to come into our lives and say, “Arise!” He is the one who can do what we are unable to do. When the woman touches the hem of Jesus’ garment, she comes in contact with a wholly other source of life, an entirely new mode of existence, enabling her to return to a new and more fecund way of life. Only Jesus can bestow upon us our true identities and the fullness of life. All of us have experienced doctors who have aided us little. All of us have engaged in religious efforts that originated solely in ourselves; they did not originate in the grace of God. Jesus is the one who can touch us on the profoundest level of our identity. If we call upon him he will bestow new life upon us. The Lord Jesus has come so that we might make the transition from the doctors of this world to a relationship with him, from a life based on our own puny efforts at being coherent to an existence centred on his love for us. Jesus comes, takes us by the hand and says, “I say to you, arise! Live by my word! Be raised up on the basis of my power alone!”