CHRIST IS THE LORD AND GIVER OF LIFE
God from all intent and purpose wants us to have life and abundance; he is the giver of life, not death. This mystery of God´s generosity in life to us is difficult to understand, especially in a world with too many miseries.
Human sufferings, miseries, death, and evil are not God´s making or doing. It came because of Satan and the evil ones as well as the choices we make in life. The culture of death around us today is all man´s making.
However, God, through his Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life generates, operates, and directs the life of the Spirit in us. This is so because he created us in his image and likeness. In God, it is all light and life and no alteration of darkness or death.
Since our life, both physical and spiritual are rooted in God. It is important to be appreciative of the gift of life and to use it graciously.
OUR THEME
The readings of this Sunday invite us to see in God the origin of all goodness. He is the giver of life both physical and spiritual. Hence, he is the only one who can restore them to wholeness through healing and raising them to life again after the corruption of disease and death, respectively.
The readings equally urge and challenge us to be grateful for our body and soul health and use God’s gifts of life and health responsibly. In all reality, our life is either we live by faith or by fear. Indeed, what makes the difference to the situations around us is your faith or fear approach to life.
Thus, the gift of healing to health or restoring to life is all through faith. Faith that defies all odds and obstacles. Faith comes through the personal experience of life or the intervention of others in our situations through faith in God.
FIRST READING: WISDOM 1:13-15, 2:23-24
All that God does is wholesome, and he intends us to enjoy blessed immortality in Him and with Him forever. God is the Creator and Source of life. He does not make death (evil or bad things), nor does He rejoice in the destruction of life.
Interestingly, the author of the Book of Wisdom takes up a key idea from Genesis that we were made in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:27.). The implication here is that God cannot be destructive toward his image or likeness in us not by disease or death.
The same Genesis account ends up with a solid and fundamental fact that all God created was good and indeed they are very good. This is the remark of the author of Genesis, which means no bad, evil death, violence, or destruction culture was ever found in God.
Death, dying, and decaying have no place in God´s plan for humanity. It came out of man´s free will to choose evil or good. The just or righteous with the hope of immortality or eternity do not experience death. Death is the product of sin and it pertains to the devil and all who live in sin.
The psalmist in Psalm 30 invites us to be grateful to God, “I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.” He is the God who rescues us from the pit of hell, evil, destruction, and death.
Actually, Psalm 30 celebrates Christ’s victory over death, sin, evil, and the devil. The Psalm refrain, “I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me,” allows us to join the Psalm in thanksgiving, by Jesus’ Sacrificial death, we, too, have been rescued from spiritual death by having our sins forgiven.
SECOND READING: 2 CORINTHIANS 8:7, 9, 13-15
Paul asks his well-off Corinthians to help the Christian poor in Jerusalem. Paul asked the Corinthians to be generous in their contributions to a fund being collected for this suffering, starving brothers and sisters. The Church of Jerusalem is the Mother Church with a predominantly Jewish population, but she was poor.
Therefore, Paul desired and encouraged all the Gentiles’ Churches to remember and help that Church, which was their mother in the faith. The strength of the Church is the unity and strength of its members.
For Paul, the only true and real way of living the Christian life is through generosity with others, especially the less privileged. This generosity does not only include material things but also one´s time, energy, and being. A Generosity that is driven by the spirit of self-giving or self-donation to God and others.
Hence, St. Paul invites us to balance life, faith, and reality, to know the difference between faith-based reality prayer and mindful wishes prayer. That is the Christian is not only in believing or professing faith in God. It is also a practical life of serving and helping the needy or poor among us.
We see that Jesus’s generosity is central in today’s readings as well: Paul describes Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection as “the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
THE GOSPEL: MARK 5:21-43
The Gospel describes two cures of Jesus blended into a single story: the hemorrhaging woman for twelve years and the twelve-year-old daughter of Jairus. These miracles demonstrated much about Christ and God.
LESSONS FROM THE MIRACLES OF TODAY
- Jesus attributed his two miracles to the faith of the seekers. These miracles were worked by Jesus as a reward for the trusting Faith of a synagogue ruler and a woman with a hemorrhage.
- These healings teach us that Jesus wills life and wills full life for all God’s children.
- He is available and accessible to the people who want to reach him.
- He does not have bodyguards or assistants who ward off or limit people´s access to him.
- They also reveal Jesus as a generous, kind, compassionate God Who wills that men should live their wholesome lives fully, giving us further proof of the Divine power and the Infinite Mercy of our Saviour.
- It teaches us that faith in Christ Jesus is victory over death and seemingly impossible human situations.
- Wherever there is death either through sin, disease, or distress of any kind. Faith in Christ restores all things anew.
THE CHALLENGES FOR US TODAY
The challenge to us all is for us to be available or accessible to those who try to reach us. A Church should never have a pastor who is not available to the people or his flock. It will be a disaster and a total failure for the spiritual and pastoral well-being of the flock.
THE COST OF HEALING: Mark 5:30-34
Jesus´ realization that power or energy has gone out of him tells us something about his total self-giving. It tells us the cost of healing. Every time Jesus healed anyone it took something out of him. Here is a universal rule of life.
We will never produce anything great unless we are prepared to put something of ourselves, of our very life, of our very soul into it. This is why he is the giver of life and restorer of health because these are precious gifts that entail total self-emptying.
The lack of sensitivity or empathy of the disciples of Jesus who walked amid many human pains, sufferings, and tragedies but could not catch into it is a real tragedy. One of the tragedies of life is the strange insensitiveness of the human mind especially of religious leaders to pains and agonies around them most times.
As Christians, we need to pray for common sense, but sometimes too pray for that sensitive, imaginative insight that can see into the pains, sufferings, and agonies of the bodies and hearts of others.
DESPAIR AND HOPE: Mark 5:35-39
Furthermore, we learn something about the woman and her sense of relief at her admittance or confession of what has happened to her. It was all so difficult and so humiliating. However, once she had told the whole truth to Jesus, the terror and the trembling were gone and a wave of relief flooded her heart.
When she had made her pitiful confession she found him very kind. It is never hard to confess to one who understands like Jesus: the giver of life and restorer of health. Many people had difficulty in life telling their stories of pain, anguish, sadness, and tragedy. They need a non-judgmental individual to open up their bottled pains and sorrows to be healed or relieved.
THE DIFFERENCE FAITH MAKES: Mark 5:40-43
This passage is a story of contrasts between God and humans, hope and despair.
There is a contrast between the despair of the mourners and the hope of Jesus. “Don’t bother the Teacher,” they said. “There’s nothing anyone can do now.” “Don’t be afraid,” said Jesus, “only believe.” In one place, it is the voice of despair that speaks; in the other the voice of hope.
There is a contrast between the unrestrained distress of the mourners and the calm serenity of Jesus. They were wailing and weeping and tearing their hair and rending their garments in a paroxysm of distress; he was calm and quiet and serene and in control.
For those who have faith and hope in God death is an eternal sleep to be in the presence of God forever. It is a transitional change of our state of being limited by space and time into immortality of glorious transformation. While for faithless people death is a loss, a pain, and a tragedy with no hope of the resurrection or to eternal life.
Why this difference? It was due to Jesus’ perfect confidence and trust in God. The worst human disaster can be met with courage and gallantry when we meet it with God. They laughed him to scorn because they thought his hope was groundless and his calm mistaken. But the great fact of the Christian life is that what looks completely impossible with men is possible with God.
FOUR BASIC THINGS STAND OUT IN THE CELEBRATION OF THIS 13TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME.
I. Death, sufferings, pains, and sicknesses have no place in God´s plan for us, for the creation, or the universe. All pains, sufferings, sicknesses, and death are the devil´s doing or our own making as well.
II. God is compassionate and empathetic. There is no shadow of death or pains of sicknesses in Him. He is the giver of life and restorer of health no matter the circumstances.
III. God gives us life, health, blessings, and grace without reservation. His generosity in Christ Jesus through the Holy Spirit knows no bounds. We are invited and challenged to a life of generosity with total self-giving to others. (Materially, personally with our time, energy, and self).
IV. Faith in God surmounts all obstacles, fears, worries, and limitations we place on ourselves or situations of life might place on us. God cannot heal us of sicknesses or restore us to life from our dead condition or situation of life if we have faith in believing in Him.
FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS
A. What are the dead situations facing you or your loved ones? Sicknesses? Failures in personal life, marital life, family life, economic or spiritual life?
B. What is your image of God? A brutal and insensitive God? Or a compassionate and empathetic God? Do you know your image or impression of God determines how well you relate with him?
C. Do you live by personal faith conviction or the intervening faith conviction of others in our crisis moments?
D. How generous are you with your resources, time, energy, life, or faith to help others in need?
OUR PRAYER
Lord Jesus Christ, you are a generous God and the giver of life and restorer of health. You invite us to live by faith, which means or entails hanging onto God where human reason and human capacity stop. Help us in our crisis of faith to know we are all overcomers in you: the author and finisher of our faith. Amen!
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