OT XIII  Wis 1:13-15, 2:23-24; II Cor 8:7,9,13-15; Mk 5:21-43

A Jesuit theologian Peter Arokiadass was dying of  cancer.  On the eve of his death, when asked by a relative why God gave him, a priest, such sickness, Arokiadoss replied: “No, God didn’t give me this sickness. All of us have cancer cells which are under control. Most likely because of my lifestyle or food or sleeping habits, I might have given cause for these cells to grow and destroy the good cells. God does not cause sickness; we cause it ourselves.”

The Book of Wisdom, tells us that God gave us life and health, and that it was the jealousy of Satan which produced illness and death. We often feel that God is the cause of all births/deaths, but Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life, and have it in abundance.” Indeed, God is a God of Life, and “death is not God’s doing.” It is, rather, we who cause death in myriad forms – through our sin, selfishness, pride, power-plays, greed, and godlessness. Nonetheless, the Lord of Life bids us to touch people and heal them.

 

Today’s Gospel describes two of our Lord’s miracles, the healing of a woman who suffered from a chronic bleeding disease, and the returning of the dead daughter of Jairus to life.   These healings teach us that Jesus wills life, full life, for all God’s children. These miracles were worked by Jesus as rewards for the trusting faith of a synagogue ruler and of a woman with a hemorrhage. Although the faith of the ruler may have been defective, and the woman’s faith may have been a bit superstitious, Jesus amply rewarded the faith they had by granting them health and life.

The Mosaic Law (Lv 15:25-27) declared her unclean and shut her off from the worship of God and the fellowship of her friends. That may be why she decided to try to touch the tassels of Jesus’ garment secretly. The woman’s boldness in touching Jesus’ garment — which, according to the Law, made Jesus unclean — could have angered the Master. But her faith in the healing power of Jesus was so strong that she risked breaking all the social rules to seek what she believed He could do for her. By affectionately calling her “daughter,” Jesus established a relationship with her, made her his family, and gave her the assurance that she was healed:   “Daughter, your Faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction.”   By trusting in the power of God and doing His will, she was not only physically cured but was also fully restored to a normal religious and social life. It was her touching Jesus’ garment – that was a major factor in her healing.

 

Why did Jesus go all the way to Jairus's house and take his little daughter by the hand in order to bring her back to life? Why not just do it from a distance?

And why didn't Jesus cure the woman with bleeding without her having to touch him? It is because God wants to be close to us; he wants to live in friendship with us. And since we are human beings, not angels, that closeness, that friendship requires not only spiritual contact, but physical contact as well. Our God doesn't keep his distance; he walks by our side.

 

We all know in our heads that God is always present, always watching over us, always wanting to be part of everything we do. But it is one thing to know this in our heads, and quite another to know it in our hearts, with a mature faith.

When the Christians in Armenia were suffering persecution from Turkish conquerors, back in the eleventh century, there were many opportunities to move faith from the head to the heart. There is one story about a Christian girl who had been captured in a raid. They tried to force her to renounce her Christian faith, but she refused, even in the face of their threats and their weapons.

So, instead of making her a slave, the pagan soldiers decided to play a cruel game with her by throwing her to their battle dogs. They put her in the kennel that night, and came back in the morning to see what had happened. They couldn't believe their eyes. In the bright light of dawn they saw the young girl kneeling in prayer, with the largest and most savage of all the dogs standing right next to her. That dog snapped at every other dog that tried to come near the child.

The pagan soldiers were terrified by the sight and ran away, crying out at the top of their lungs, "There is a God here! There is a God here!"

And they were right - God was with that child, standing by her side.

God wants to be part of our lives, to walk with us, because he knows we need his guidance and encouragement if we are going to journey safely through this fallen world and into his heavenly Kingdom.

Today, as we receive holy Communion, Jesus renews his commitment to be our companion through life, let's renew our commitment to make good use of all the gifts he has given us through his Church. Not just the sacraments, but also the sacramentals - small signs of our faith in God's presence, like holy water, house blessings, crucifixes, and sacred images can help us increase that awareness.  Let’s try to touch the fringe of his garments with faith and seek his healing touch for our wounded soul.

 

 

OT XII [B] SUNDAY: Job 38:1, 8-11; II Cor 5:14-17; Mk 4:35-41

The role of God in calming the storms of life is the central theme of the readings for this Storm Sunday. The first reading tells us how the Lord speaks to Job whose life was devastated by storms of the total loss of his possessions, the deaths of his dear ones, and a whole-body disease that left him in misery. It also states that, although the wicked prosper and the innocent suffer for a time, YAHWEH finally redresses the wrongs suffered by the innocent!

Throughout Mark’s Gospel, Jesus works miracles as a sign of head-on engagement with the forces of sin and evil in this world. In the miracle stories, Jesus’ unequivocal triumph over these forces verifies His true identity as the Messiah of God. The miracle of the stilling of the sea is described in Mark for the same purpose. By describing this miracle, Mark also assures the first-century believers that nothing can harm the Church as long as the risen Lord is with them. Mark’s audience in Rome in the 60s A.D. surely felt that way as they faced the persecution by the Emperor Nero during which both Peter and Paul were probably martyred.

Many of the Fathers of the Church consider this miracle story as an allegory of the early Church. The ocean, in the Old Testament, because of its mystery, power, and unpredictability, was often used as a symbol for evil and chaos. The boat in the stormy lake is a symbol of the Church facing challenges and heresies from inside and various forms of suppression and persecution from outside. The early Church faced fierce persecution in the first three centuries. It was followed by a calm period, but that period was plagued with heresies, as many as 22 heresies, culminating in the Protestant Reformation Movement. The faithful in such situations wondered if Jesus had deserted the Church. But in their desperate cry for help they were able to experience the inner peace and strength of Jesus.   Very often the Church and the faithful have no control over the political and social developments of our society. But, no matter what we are experiencing, we can — with the help of Jesus — find peace. It is the peace which only Jesus can give. And it is a peace which no person, no thing, and no situation can take away from us.

 

We need to remember that Jesus is always with us in the boat of our life. All of us are making a journey across the sea of time to the shore of eternity. Hence, it is natural that, occasionally, we all experience different types of violent storms in our lives: physical storms, emotional storms, and spiritual storms. We face storms of sorrow, doubt, anxiety, worry, temptation and passion. The storms we encounter in life are often what make us or break us. These storms can either bring us closer to God and one another or alienate us from God and others. And it is only Jesus who can still these storms for us. Jesus can give us real peace in the storm of sorrow.

Victor Hugo, who is famous for his novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, also wrote a story called “Ninety-Three.” It tells of a ship caught in a dangerous storm on the high seas. At the height of the storm, the frightened sailors heard a terrible crashing noise below the deck. They knew at once that this new noise came from a cannon, part of the ship’s cargo, that had broken loose. It was moving back and forth with the swaying of the ship, crashing into the side of the ship with terrible impact. Knowing that it could cause the ship to sink, two brave sailors volunteered to make the dangerous attempt to retie the loose cannon. They knew the danger of a shipwreck from the cannon was greater than the fury of the storm. — That is like human life. Storms of life may blow about us, but it is not these exterior storms that pose the gravest danger. It is the terrible corruption that can exist within us which can overwhelm us. The furious storm outside may be overwhelming, but what is going on inside can pose the greater threat to our lives. Our only hope lies in conquering that wild enemy: the fear, the fear of the uncertain. Fear comes from lack of faith. Unfortunately storms that rage within us we cannot cure by ourselves. It takes the power of God’s love, as revealed in Jesus Christ. He is our only hope of stilling the tempest that can harm our souls and cripple our lives. That’s what the disciples learned this day on the Sea of Galilee.

 

Every week during the Mass we pray the Creed. The Creed sums up what we believe as Christians, what the Church teaches, what God has revealed to the world about Himself and the purpose of our lives. Unfortunately, most of us have become so used to the Creed that we often fail to savor the delicious truths that it contains.

We pray: "We believe in one God, the Father almighty." Almighty is a synonym for all-powerful, omnipotent. That's our Lord; he alone is all-powerful; nothing is difficult for him. When we are threatened by storms of life let’s affirm our faith in the Lord who calmed the storm for the apostles. Let’s wake up the Lord who seems to be sleeping in the boat of our life and ask him to save our life and strengthen our faith in him.

 

 

OT XI (B): Ez 17: 22-24; II Cor 5:6-10; Mk 4:26-34

Jesus’ favorite topic was "the Kingdom of God."  His first public sermon began with "The Kingdom of God is at hand", and from then on he kept talking about it, as in today's Gospel. But not a single parable fully explains all the aspects of the kingdom. Kingdom of God was this favorite theme because that is where he came to lead us.

If there is a Kingdom, there must also be a King, and if there is a King, there must be subjects. That's how he sees the Church, as a Kingdom, not merely as some kind of club. When we pray, "Thy Kingdom come," do we mean the same thing that Jesus meant when he taught us that prayer? God's Kingdom is the realm where hearts obey him out of faith and love.

If we really want to help Christ redeem the kingdom of this world by transforming it, through his grace, into the Kingdom of Christ, we have to keep hearkening to the King and carrying out his commands, even when they are uncomfortable for our selfish tendencies.

 

Jesus always used stories or parables to teach people. An argument speaks to the mind alone, but a story appeals to the whole person: mind and heart and imagination. If an argument is not understood straight away it is lost, but a story tends to stay in the memory, enlightening the mind and heart at a later time when the person is ready to grasp its meaning. We are not often, certainly not always, in the mood to hear arguments, but we are always ready to hear a story or to look at an image. By teaching in parables, he is trying to explain deeper spiritual realities using the everyday realities understood by his listeners. 

The picture painted in the Parable of the Mustard Seed by Jesus is of the humble beginnings of the Church experiencing an explosive rate of growth. While growth itself was the primary focus of the first seed parable, the mustard seed comparison emphasizes the contrast between tiny beginnings and tremendous endings.

The tiny mustard seed, growing to be a tree, symbolizes Jesus’ offer of refuge and life in God’s Kingdom. Here, Jesus uses a shrub coming from a tiny seed (Jn 12:24), to represent Kingdom growth, consistent with other tree/Kingdom references (Ez 17:23 and Dn 4:11-21).

The example of the mustard seed shows that it starts small: in Jesus’ earthly ministry it went from him to twelve disciples, then to thousands by the time narrated in the Acts of the Apostles, and to the whole world and throughout history. 

 

The Kingdom doesn’t just represent something small that has an incredible capacity for growth and expansion; like the cool shade of the mustard plant, it makes room for everyone to find rest and consolation because God wants everyone to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

The virtues that give true, lasting beauty to our lives, that give our lives meaning and deep happiness (virtues like wisdom, courage, self-control, and Christ-like love), are like the seeds in the Lord's parables. They are planted in our hearts at baptism, and as we follow and obey Christ in our daily lives, they grow and flourish.

We can all plant tiny seeds in the form of words of love, acts of encouragement, and deeds of charity, mercy and forgiveness. Parents and teachers can plant a lot of seeds in the minds of their children and students. The Holy Spirit will touch the hearts of the recipients of these seeds sown by us and He will effect the growth of the kingdom in their souls and lives. As the apostle Paul once said of his ministry, “Neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (1 Cor 3:7).

The Kingdom of God is the growth of God’s rule in human hearts that occurs when man does the will of God and surrenders his life to God. The seed of Faith lies dormant within each of us. When we permit the Holy Spirit to nurture it with TLC (tender loving care), it grows miraculously into gigantic proportions. The growth is slow and microscopic in the beginning. But this seed grows by using the power of the Holy Spirit, given to us through the Word of God, the Mass, the Sacraments, and prayer. As we learn God’s will from His words and try to put these words into practice, we participate in the growth of God’s Kingdom on earth, a growth which will be completed in our Heavenly life. Let’s pray today for a special anointing of the Holy Spirit to help us to be doers of the word of God, and thereby offer our lives to God and for the cause of His Kingdom.

 

 

Cycle (B) Corpus Christi: Ex 24:3-8; Hb 9:11-15; Mk 14:12-16, 22-26

 

The Pelican is excessively dedicated to its young ones. The pelican collects small fish and stores in the pouch at its neck. In the process of feeding them the bird presses the pouch against its neck. There is a reddish tinge at its breast plumage and redness at the tip of its beak.  All these specialties of the pelican have given rise to a legend of the Pelican feeding its young with its own blood.

The mother Pelican pierces its breast, opens her side and lays herself across her young pouring out her blood over the young. The young ones feed on the mother's blood and revive strength and come back to life. This symbol of pelican was used by the medieval church to indicate the sacrifice of Jesus. Today we are celebrating the feast of the Body and blood of Christ. This feast reminds us of the great sacrifice of Jesus and His command to his disciples, “Do this in memory of me."

From the time of the election of the Israelites God's presence was manifested in various ways among them. Moses received 10 commandments on Mount Sinai. As he brought it to the people they made a Tabernacle and placed the Tablets in it. The presence of God lingered over the tabernacle.

God's presence has always been with His people in various ways.  He manifests himself through the astounding beauty and immensity of creation itself.  Through the voice of the prophets, through the wisdom of the sages, and finally God manifested Himself in human form through Jesus. Jesus at his departure instituted the Eucharist to continue his presence with his people. St Francis of Assisi who had a profound experience of Jesus declared, "Just as He appeared before the holy Apostles in true flesh, so now He has us see Him in the Sacred Bread. For in this way our Lord is ever present among those who believe in him, according to what He said: "Behold, I am with you all days even to the end of the world." (Mt. 28, 20)

In addition to the presence of God, throughout the Old Testament  God expresses His concern for the people. During  the exodus when the people craved for food God sent them the heavenly bread, "Manna" which people ate and they were satisfied. The Scripture says, "He provided Manna which neither you nor your fathers had experienced before (Deut 8:3 ). When they were thirsty God asked Moses to strike the rock and water gushed forth.  Prophet Jeremiah preached to the people (Jer 9:15) “Therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will feed them, and give them water". In the New Testament we have numerous instances where Jesus expressed his concern for the poor and hungry.  The miracle of multiplication of bread to feed the crowd is an instance of Jesus' concern for them.

The Eucharist, therefore, is the symbol of God's presence.  St Maximilian Kolbe wrote, “God dwells in our midst, in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar." It is the symbol of God's concern and God’s immeasurable love. St. Peter Julian Eymard expressed it as, “The Eucharist is the supreme proof of the love of Jesus. After this, there is nothing more but Heaven itself."  Jesus is present among us in Eucharist. And we keep the Eucharist most venerably in the tabernacle.

When we receive the Holy Communion we become the tabernacle where Jesus is present. So Maximilian Kolbe says, “If angels could be jealous of men, they would be so for one reason: Holy Communion." Hence, it is binding on us that we should keep the tabernacle, ourselves, holy.  St Francis de Sales preached to the people, "When you have received Him, stir up your heart to do Him homage, welcome Him as warmly as possible, and behave outwardly in such a way that your actions may give proof to all of His Presence." Blessed Damian dedicated his life for the service of the lepers. It was a hard choice. He said, "Blessed Sacrament is, indeed, the stimulus for me to forsake all worldly ambitions."

Recognizing the sublimity of the Blessed sacrament requires from us to prepare properly to receive Holy Communion every time. We have tarnished God’s image within us through acts of impurity, injustice, disobedience and the like.  Hence, there is always need for repentance, and a need for the Sacramental confession of grave sins, before we receive Holy Communion.  We should remember the warning given by St. Paul: “Whoever, therefore, eats the Bread or drinks the Cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the Body and Blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the Bread and drink of the Cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the Body, eat and drink judgment against themselves.” (1 Cor. 11:27-9). Hence, let us receive Holy Communion with fervent love and respect — not merely as a matter of routine.  

 

As we celebrate this great feast of Faith, let us repeat St. Thomas Aquinas’ prayer of devotion in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament:  “O Sacrament most holy! O Sacrament Divine! All praise and all thanksgiving be every moment Thine!”