Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Wisdom community in Israel was preoccupied with human origins and a connection with a God who is intimately linked to creation.  Humanity is an imago Dei – the very image of God.  They would have loved the new encyclical on the environment by Pope Francis, Laudato Si’.  We have a divine spark within us that just will not burn out.

Turning to the gospel, we can only imagine what Jairus was going through.  Most of us know at least one couple who has lost a child.  There is nothing worse; the loss of your own flesh and blood is a shattering, withering, disintegrating experience.  It is unnatural for a parent to have to bury a child.  And the grief lasts a lifetime.  The tragic death of a child reminds us more than ever of our need for hope.  A longing for the divine spark that will ignite us all.

And the raising of Jairus’s daughter remains only a part of a plan of re-creation and healing in Mark’s Gospel.  From the very beginning Jesus’ ministry was committed to restoring what was lost.  From casting out demons to repairing crippled limbs, our Lord was making right what was wrong.

The return of Jairus’s daughter, the raising of the widow’s son at Naim, the life-giving shout to Lazarus to “come forth” are a return to the order that the Creator had originally intended for them.  What could be more natural in the newly restored creation brought by Jesus than a child coming back to a grief-stricken father?  That restoration could not be otherwise in the Kingdom that Jesus has initiated.

Jesus’ healing ministry recalls God’s own hand at the dawn of creation.  The book of Wisdom says that “God fashioned all things that they might have being and the creatures of the world are wholesome.”  Jesus tells them to give the girl something to eat.  She has been brought back to wholeness, complete and entire.

This is God’s Son Jesus rejuvenating fallen creation so that it might be whole again, certainly a sign that he was also defeating sin, darkness, and death.  Pope Francis reminds us that human beings are “capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start.”

Jairus longing for his daughter’s life is a reminder of the human heart’s desire for a return to the way God intended creation to be from the beginning.  God desires our complete happiness as we are freed from death’s stranglehold.  That is happening even now, as all things are restored in Christ.

Listen closely; at this very moment the kingdom is upon us, quiet as a whisper.  Some will remember the prayers the priest used to say at the foot of the altar before Mass.  “I will go to the altar of God, to God who gives joy to my youth.”  God is giving us new life, right now, here at this Eucharist.

We may have come to this church as sleepwalkers, skeptics, certainly as sinners.  This is the place where the promise of renewal in our baptism in Christ remains steadfast in the sharing of this Eucharist.  This is the house of God, where the poor Christ comes as both host and divine guest in bread and wine to feed his people.  All his people.

Rich and poor, young and old, gay and straight, saint and sinner.  If there is any place where folks are equal, where the poverty that so many face each day is banished, and where power means nothing at all, it is here around this altar.

We taste the banquet of heaven where full restoration will be complete.  Where class and social divisions will be vanquished.  Where we will stand together as witnesses to God’s re-creation in Christ.  On that day, we shall see our God face to face and know the fullness of what it means to trace our origins in Christ himself.

Until then, there is one Bread and one Cup that knit us together.  His Body and Blood give us a joy beyond all others and restore us as wholesome daughters and sons.  We are once again returned to health.  That is all that is required, and nothing less will be enough.

Paul A. Magnano, Pastor