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Click here for information on the Knights of Columbus Charity Golf Tournament held on Saturday, June 15, 2024.
If I gave my homily a title it would be: Jesus hates death. That is the message we get from each of the readings. Our first reading from the Book of Wisdom could not be clearer. Listen. “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.” Death as we know it and experience it, is not at all what God intended. Remember the story of creation. After every living thing was created by God he said, “It is good.” After creating man and woman in his image, he said, “It is very good.” That’s what Wisdom is talking about when it says, “For God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him. But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world.” Death as we experience it - as something fearful, horrible, terrifying - is the result of having turned from God. All sin, which involves the terrible clinging to self and attacking of others, ultimately flows from a fear of death. Every tyrant or terrorist group who has ever ruled has succeeded only by instilling in people the fear of death. And fear of death is exactly how Satan gets us to focus on ourselves, to be “me-centered”at the expense of everyone else.
Jesus came as a healer whose ultimate enemy is death. That’s why he took on human flesh, became one of us, so that as one of us he could show us how to live unafraid of death. To show us that death has no hold over us. That is why Christ’s first task was to heal, to battle death wherever he found it.
That is what today’s Gospel is all about. It is one of the best crafted healing stories in the bible, a “story within a story”and full of little details about Jesus’mission. Reread it this week. The hemorrhaging woman has suffered for twelve years, Jairus’daughter is 12 years old. The number twelve is symbolic of the people of God: twelve tribes of Israel, twelve apostles. That tells us right away that this is our story, this is a story of how God can and will heal us, bring us back to life. The girl was already dead and the woman was as good as dead. According to Jewish law a dead person could only be touched by her family to prepare the body for burial. Anyone else that touched a corpse was unclean and could not go to the synagogue or participate in any community activity. They were as good as dead. Anyone hemorrhaging was also unclean and anyone that touched them or that they touched was also unclean, cut off from society, alone, as good as dead to everyone else. What happens? Jesus is touched by the woman and Jesus touches Jairus’daughter. And both are healed, both are restored to life, restored to family and community. We know the little girl was someone important, the daughter of a synagogue leader, a man with a name, Jairus. What about the woman? She has no name, is no one, just another outcast. But what happens after she touches the hem of Jesus’garment? He calls her “daughter.” The woman without a name now has the greatest name of all, a daughter of God. What Jairus’daughter was to him, this woman was to God, a beloved child. Our story tells us you don’t have to be someone important to be saved from death; you just have to have faith and touch or be touched by Jesus.
That is today’s message. To be healed, to be saved from sin and death, we have to touch and be touched by Jesus. How? In the Eucharist, the Bread of Life. We walk up here with our hands cupped and say, “Amen”and Jesus touches us. And we touch him. Flesh touches flesh, blood absorbs blood. And we are healed. You can’t touch God and not be healed, changed. We are called to do as Christ did, that means we have to heal others, we have to touch others and be touched by others. We have to be open to those that need our touch, those that need God’s healing. In our homes, our neighborhood, our community.
Here is a secret: when we reach out to others so often it ends up being us who experience healing and ask in surprise, “Who touched me?”
Jesus came as a healer whose ultimate enemy is death. That’s why he took on human flesh, became one of us, so that as one of us he could show us how to live unafraid of death. To show us that death has no hold over us. That is why Christ’s first task was to heal, to battle death wherever he found it.
That is what today’s Gospel is all about. It is one of the best crafted healing stories in the bible, a “story within a story”and full of little details about Jesus’mission. Reread it this week. The hemorrhaging woman has suffered for twelve years, Jairus’daughter is 12 years old. The number twelve is symbolic of the people of God: twelve tribes of Israel, twelve apostles. That tells us right away that this is our story, this is a story of how God can and will heal us, bring us back to life. The girl was already dead and the woman was as good as dead. According to Jewish law a dead person could only be touched by her family to prepare the body for burial. Anyone else that touched a corpse was unclean and could not go to the synagogue or participate in any community activity. They were as good as dead. Anyone hemorrhaging was also unclean and anyone that touched them or that they touched was also unclean, cut off from society, alone, as good as dead to everyone else. What happens? Jesus is touched by the woman and Jesus touches Jairus’daughter. And both are healed, both are restored to life, restored to family and community. We know the little girl was someone important, the daughter of a synagogue leader, a man with a name, Jairus. What about the woman? She has no name, is no one, just another outcast. But what happens after she touches the hem of Jesus’garment? He calls her “daughter.” The woman without a name now has the greatest name of all, a daughter of God. What Jairus’daughter was to him, this woman was to God, a beloved child. Our story tells us you don’t have to be someone important to be saved from death; you just have to have faith and touch or be touched by Jesus.
That is today’s message. To be healed, to be saved from sin and death, we have to touch and be touched by Jesus. How? In the Eucharist, the Bread of Life. We walk up here with our hands cupped and say, “Amen”and Jesus touches us. And we touch him. Flesh touches flesh, blood absorbs blood. And we are healed. You can’t touch God and not be healed, changed. We are called to do as Christ did, that means we have to heal others, we have to touch others and be touched by others. We have to be open to those that need our touch, those that need God’s healing. In our homes, our neighborhood, our community.
Here is a secret: when we reach out to others so often it ends up being us who experience healing and ask in surprise, “Who touched me?”