Introduction: May you continue to experience the fullness of life which Jesus offers you so that you may be enriched by GOD’s blessings now and forever.
Sometimes, life seems meaningless. There are people who are willing to die professing their faith in Jesus. It is a willingness to give up our earthly life for a fuller life in the hereafter, so that through the death one wants GOD to let us serve others in some way and make our life a sign to others of GOD’s love.
Would we be as willing to say “yes” when asked with a gun in our face, “Are you a Christian?” Do we want our life to enrich others and praise GOD, even if it means the end to our existence here and now?
GOD desires that we live. Death has never been GOD’s primary plan for humans. GOD wants us to experience life. True life can be experienced only by those who put their faith and trust in GOD. In the First Reading, the Wisdom writer reminds us that death comes not from GOD but from evil (both human evil and the Evil One). The Responsorial proclaims GOD’s work of rescuing mortals from the enemy who desires to destroy life. In the Second Reading, St. Paul writes to the people of Corinth informing them that GOD’s plan, in and through Jesus, is that we all share in the richness of divine life and also share what earthly wealth we have, particularly with those who have less, thus, we will all experience the richness of GOD. In the Gospel today, Jesus gives new life to two females: first to the woman suffering from hemorrhages, and secondly, to the sick daughter of a synagogue official.
First Reading, Wisdom 1:13-15,2:23-24: God takes no pleasure in the extinction of the living
Commentary: This reading takes the opportunity to reflect on death in God’s scheme of things. For those who have no faith, death rules everything. It is the absolute end, perhaps a release from suffering, but always a tragedy for somebody, the awesome end-point from which there is no return. The Book of Wisdom was written at a time when belief in immortality and the resurrection was finally emerging in Israel. Earlier Israel had believed that the dead dwelt in a sort of powerless half-life in Sheol (not unlike the Greek Hades), where it is impossible even to pray. Now Israel realised that the love of God for every person was so strong that it could never be broken off by death. As Jesus was to say, God is a God not of the dead but of the living. This reading is wonderfully positive and ebullient, for God is a God of life in all its positive forms, all of which are a reflection of God’s own life. The fullest of all these reflections is the life of each human individual, created in the image of God.
Responsorial Psalm 30:2,4-6,11-13, I will praise you, Lord, you have rescued me.
The psalmist has experienced the attacks from those who work against GOD’s plan. Yet, more importantly, the writer of this psalm has also experienced being rescued by the LORD GOD, Who desires fullness of life for those who put their trust in GOD. The fitting response of those who have experienced rescue (being saved by GOD) is the giving of praise, thanks, and glory to GOD.
Second Reading, 2 Corinthians 8:7,9,13-15: The Lord Jesus became poor for your sake, to make you rich
Commentary: Paul’s Letter to the Galatians shows that there was a major disagreement in the early Church between those who held that Christians must still obey the Jewish Law and those who did not. The Law-party was led by the Church at Jerusalem under James, brother of the Lord. After all, Christianity is the fulfilment of the promises to Abraham, the fulfilment of Judaism! Paul set about healing the breach by making a great collection from his gentile Churches to take to the Church at Jerusalem as an act of homage and friendship. There seem to have been many poor people at Jerusalem, whom the people of such a bustling and successful harbour-town as Corinth could help. Paul writes in this letter, giving the basic principle of Christian generosity: the imitation of Christ, who gave himself wholly in love. Yet he also gives the invaluable principle that each individual’s conscience is the only yardstick. Not all of us can reach our human fulfilment by living in the destitution of St Francis, and each must judge their giving by their own conscience. Some Christian communities prescribe one tenth of their income in giving. Paul avoids any mathematical formula, for circumstances and obligations differ – as well as generosity.
Gospel Mark 5:21-43: Little girl, I tell you to get up
Commentary: As we have seen, the author of the Gospel of Mark likes to combine incidents to show their joint significance, often, as here, sandwiching one story between the two halves of another. In this instance the significance is surely that both recipients of Jesus’ healing love are women. Only a minority of Jesus’ miracles concern women, and the bringing together of these two, one a girl and the other an old woman, serves to stress their importance to Jesus. It is unfair to accuse the Bible of being male-dominated. A mother’s devotion is a frequent image of God’s love. There are plenty of strong women in the Old Testament, who put their menfolk to shame by their courage, enterprise and initiative: Rebecca, Tamar, Deborah, Ruth, Esther, Judith. Jesus’ own relationships with women seem to have been easy and even humorous. One need only think of his playful bargaining with the Syro-Phoenician over the cure of her daughter, or the jokey exchange between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, not to mention his delicacy towards the woman taken in adultery or the sinful woman who showed her love by weeping at his feet. Paul also clearly relied in many ways in his apostolate on the ministry of women.
Reflection: Do you approach the Lord Jesus with expectant faith or with skeptical doubt? People in desperate or helpless circumstances were not disappointed when they sought Jesus out. What drew them to Jesus? Was it hope for a miracle or a word of comfort in their affliction? What did the elderly woman who had suffered miserably for twelve years expect Jesus to do for her? And what did a grieving father expect Jesus to do for his beloved daughter who was at the point of death? Jesus gave hope where there seemed to be no human cause for it because his hope was directed to God. He spoke words of hope to the woman (Take heart, daughter!) to ignite the spark of faith in her (your faith has made you well!).
Ephrem the Syrian (306-373 AD), an early church Scripture scholar and author of hymns and commentaries, reflected on the miracle of the woman who was healed of her flow of blood:
"Glory to you, hidden Son of God, because your healing power is proclaimed through the hidden suffering of the afflicted woman. Through this woman whom they could see, the witnesses were enabled to behold the divinity that cannot be seen. Through the Son's own healing power his divinity became known. Through the afflicted women's being healed her faith was made manifest. She caused him to be proclaimed, and indeed was honored with him. For truth was being proclaimed together with its heralds. If she was a witness to his divinity, he in turn was a witness to her faith... He saw through to her hidden faith, and gave her a visible healing."
Jesus also gave supernatural hope to a father who had just lost a beloved child. It took considerable courage and risk for the ruler of a synagogue to openly go to Jesus and to invite the scorn of his neighbors and kin. Even the hired mourners laughed scornfully at Jesus. Their grief was devoid of any hope. Nonetheless, Jesus took the girl by the hand and delivered her from the grasp of death. Peter Chrysologus (400-450 AD), an early church father who was renowned for his preaching at Ravena, comments on this miracle:
"This man was a ruler of the synagogue, and versed in the law. He had surely read that while God created all other things by his word, man had been created by the hand of God. He trusted therefore in God that his daughter would be recreated, and restored to life by that same hand which, he knew, had created her... He [Jesus] who laid hands on her to form her from nothing, once more lays hands upon her to reform her from what had perished."
In both instances we see Jesus' personal concern for the needs of others and his readiness to heal and restore life. In Jesus we see the infinite love of God extending to each and every individual as he gives freely and wholly of himself to each person he meets. Do you approach the Lord with confident expectation that he will hear your request and act?
Lord Jesus, you love each of us individually with a unique and personal love. Touch my life with your saving power, heal and restore me to fullness of life. Help me to give wholly of myself in loving service to others.
Daily Quote from the Early Church Fathers: The long-suffering of parents, by Peter Chrysologus (400-450 AD)
"Let us, if it is pleasing to you, speak for a moment of the pains and anxieties which parents take upon themselves and endure in patience out of love and affection for their children. Here, surrounded by her family and by the sympathy and affection of her relations, a daughter lies upon her bed of suffering. She is fading in body. Her father's mind and spirit are worn with grief. She is suffering the inward pangs of her sickness. He, unwashed, unkempt, is absorbed wholly in sorrow. He suffers and endures before the eyes of the world. She is sinking into the quiet of death... Alas! why are children indifferent to these things! Why are they not mindful of them? Why are they not eager to make a return to their parents for them? But the love of parents goes on nevertheless; and whatever parents bestow upon their children, God, the parent of us all, will duly repay." (excerpt from SERMON 33.2)
[Peter Chrysologus, 400-450 AD, was a renowned preacher and bishop of Ravena in the 5th century]
TWELVE
“There was a woman in the area who had been afflicted with a hemorrhage for a dozen years.” —Mark 5:25
In the Scriptures, the number twelve signifies fullness. There were “twelve tribes of Israel” (Gn 49:28). Jesus chose “twelve apostles” (Mt 10:2) and made them into the new Israel, the Church. The heavenly city has “twelve courses of stones as its foundation, on which were written the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (Rv 21:14). The woman clothed with the sun in Revelation 12:1 wears “a crown of twelve stars.” This woman, symbolizing Israel, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the Church, is fully victorious over the kingdom of darkness (Rv 12:1-17).
However, in today’s Gospel passage, the number twelve is associated with desperation and dying. The woman in today’s gospel passage suffered twelve years from a hemorrhage (Mk 5:25), the same timeframe that Jairus’ daughter had been alive (Mk 5:42). The hemorrhage made the woman ritually impure, unable to approach communal gatherings such as the meetings held in Jairus’ synagogue (Mk 5:22). After twelve years, the woman was broke and desperate, growing worse (Mk 5:26) and Jairus’ daughter died. Jesus redeemed and fulfilled the twelfth year, bringing both healing and new life.
Is there anything in your life that is dying or worn out? Are you “desperate” to the full? Bring your desperation to Jesus. In Him is “absolute fullness” (Col 1:19). He came “to fulfill” (Mt 5:17), to give you life “to the full” (Jn 10:10). Bring Jesus your emptiness, and let Him fill you.
Prayer: Jesus, thank You for coming to fill and to fulfill. I give You my emptiness. Fill me with Yourself. Jesus, I trust in You. “God formed man to be imperishable; the image of His own nature He made him.” —Wis 2:23. Praise You, Lord, for loving the world so much as to become one of us. Alleluia!
The personal action for today: How have I experienced the richness of GOD lifting me from the poverty of my previous state of being? What does it mean to me that GOD wants me to have the fullness of life? How can I enrich others with the graciousness of GOD that I have experienced and received?