Today´s readings deal
with topics we Americans, and perhaps people everywhere, would rather
avoid. The readings deal with sickness
and death[1]. We do our best to avoid sickness and
death. That’s reasonable. But there is much in us that is afraid of
sickness and death. We do our best to avoid talking about them. That is not
reasonable. That’s a denial of reality. We have such a hard time with these
topics that we have created stories tone down the reality. So, when a baby dies or a child, like the
child we call Talitha in the Gospel dies, we say, “God must have wanted another
angel with Him in heaven." This is
not true. God doesn’t go around killing
babies and little children because his angel inventory is low[2].
Let’s face it,
most of us cannot understand the very fact of death, so we put it all on God’s
shoulders. “It’s God’s will,” we say when a person dies. No it isn’t.
To say that it is God’s will is to say that God does evil things. If God is All Good, and He is, how can He do
evil things? Did God have an off
day? Aside from when he created some of
our voices, God does not have off days. So
how can we arrive at some understanding of the existence of sickness and
death? How can we understand why that
poor lady in the Gospel was suffering for years from hemorrhages, or why
Jairus’ daughter should die? How can we understand why good people that you
know and that I know have become terribly sick or have died? Perhaps we can’t
answer these questions, but we certainly are wrong when we pass the blame off
to God.
The author of
the first reading, from the Book of Wisdom, a book found in the Catholic
Bibles, does not make this mistake. Not is he afraid to tell it like it is, to
tell the truth. Our readings began today
with his telling us, God did not make
death. Nor does He rejoice in the destruction of the living. He made
everything wholesome and good. He formed
man to be imperishable, made in the image of His own nature. But through the envy of the devil, death
entered into the world.
This is
something else we don’t want to hear.
Sickness and death are the result of sin. Most often this is not the
result of the sins of the person who gets sick or dies, but it is due to the
consequences of sin in the world. Now, it is tempting to just blame Adam and
Eve, but that takes us our of the picture. We are not all that innocent. Look,
would there be wars if pride and avarice and other sins did not exist? No, there would be no reason for war. But
these sins do exist and good people like Edith Stein and Ann Frank and the
millions of innocent people who died during the conflicts of the last century
all suffered the results of these sins.
So, is there
hope for this world? Yes, there is
hope. There is hope because Christ is in
this world! We learned today how He healed that lady and how He raised up that
child. We know that He alone has power over sickness and death. We are
convinced that there are many who have returned to health due to the direct
intervention of the Lord of Life. And we
also know, that those who believe in Him with their lives but who do not return
to health, those who do die, in fact remain alive with Him. We believe in the gift of Christ’s
resurrection. He gave His Life to those
who accept Him, not just with words but with their lives. We believe in Baptism, for at Baptism we
received the spiritual life of the Trinity.
We hold on to
Jesus Christ with all our might, because He alone makes sense of the confused
reality of life. We entrust our dead to the Lord seeking His mercy and
compassion, asking Him to reward them for the goodness of their lives and
forgive them for their participation in sin.
And we ask the Lord to help us transform the world from its slavery to
sin by giving us the courage to fight sin in our own lives.
God did
not make death, the reading proclaims. He made life, eternal life. And we, the baptized, have been given the
gift of this life •
[1]
13th Sunday of Ordinary Time B, June 28, 2015. Readings: Wisdom 1:13-15;
2:23-24; Responsorial Psalm 30:2, 4, 5-6, 11, 12, 13; 2 Corinthians 8:7, 9,
13-15; Mark 5:21-43.
[2]
And besides, the whole concept of people becoming angels after they die is a
complete fabrication. Angels are different beings than human beings, including
dead human beings. Human beings do not
become angels and angels do not become human beings. Parents also make a huge mistake when they
tell their little children that Grandpa died because God wanted him to be in
heaven with him. Often they have to deal
with a child who has become angry with God for killing Grandpa.
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