June 2015

Jesus offers us two examples of healing and new life through faith. First, Jairus, the synagogue official, asks Jesus to come and lay His hands on his little girl to make her better and save her life. In the sacrament of anointing of the sick the priest lays his hands in silence on the sick person before the oil is applied to head and hands. The the young woman suffering from the haemorrhage knows she has to touch Jesus for healing, even though such an act in Jewish law will make Him unclean because of her condition. Jesus commands her faith, a faith that has enabled her to put trust in Him and go beyond the accepted boundaries of convention. In later Greek tradition the woman was given the name Berenice, which translates into the Latin Veronica, the woman who in the Stations of the Cross wipes the face of Jesus on His journey to Calvary, leaving the imprint of that face on the cloth.

We are taught both to receive life from Jesus and to convey His gift of life to others. We are invited to be touched by Him and remain in touch with Him. Without His love in our hearts we are not fully alive, and we are certainly not able to offer that love to others. Our hearts and minds are touched as we listen to His word during the liturgy, and we are nourished spiritually as we receive the gift of His body and blood in communion. By the simple act of a handshake when we exchange a sign of peace we proclaim the peace that exists between us. We may not be, for the most part, doctors or nurses, but the way we greet each other, the way we smile, the way we listen, the way we hold each other in friendship or compassion, are all carrying out of love of Christ and our witness to Him.

Whether we’re young or old, we stand in need of encouragement. And that is true especially of our spiritual life. In our efforts to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, it’s easy to get discouraged, to feel that we are making little or no progress. If that’s how we feel, today’s readings could serve as a spiritual pick-me-up.

The prophet Ezekiel, who gave us our first reading, lived at one of the most disastrous periods of Israel’s history, when its people had been hauled off into exile far away from their homeland and many were feeling that God had abandoned them. Ezekiel assures them that this is not so. On the contrary, the Lord has a plan for His people. In the Gospel, Jesus tells a parable, a story with a message not unlike that of Ezekiel. He speaks of a tiny mustard seed, which grows so huge that it provides a resting place for all birds of the air. And He tells us that the Kingdom of God is like that. While this parable gives us the big picture of God at work, Jesus tells another parable, which might be described as God’s work in miniature. God works not only on the grand scale, not only in nations and among nations, but also on the small scale, in the lives of individuals. And so Jesus tells the story of a farmer who sows his seed and then, until the harvest arrives, must patiently wait. All he knows is that secretly, night and day, the seed is growing, always growing, though he doesn’t know how; one day it will produce the blade, then the ear and finally the full grain of wheat.

In our lives, too, the Lord has sown His seed and is permanently at work within us. And while we are called to cooperate, the work of salvation is God’s achievement, not ours. In fact God is longing for us to grow in faith and hope and love, in freedom and goodness, more than we do ourselves.