2015/06/28 - Homily - 13th ord. Sunday

Imprimer

Last Sunday we saw Jesus power upon something which is very troubling for our lives : we were told that faith is required and only faith. Only this. Nothing else. But we know it is too few  or too much. It is too few, for we are able to do something expecting to make God much more understandable about our request. It is too much, for we  are not to   abound   spontaneously to it, we shall not abandon us to Him. Of course, what is needed is faith, nothing else. There is the clue of the Christian life.

Today’s Gospel  is also leading us in the same way. The way of the faith. Jesus had just come back from the other side of the sea. He was in the pagans` territory. Now he is again in the Jewish   territory.  Two stories have been told simultaneously by Marc: one about the deadly sick girl, and the other one about the woman who had been suffering for her whole life. The teenage girl was a daughter of one of the chiefs of the Synagogue. The woman was a pagan.

Both man and woman expected something great from Jesus. They put into him their trust. Jesus healed the girl by touching  her hand and saying the words: Talitha Qoum. In the case of the woman Jesus did nothing but he felt some power coming out of him, it was a woman who had just touched his clothes. Jesus seemed surprised and asked ‘who touched me’. For the disciples it was clear, it was because of the crowd. But it wasn’t.

Two different manners to show the faith in Jesus, but in both, the same trust in him is required. The healing is a result of the faith.  Not in order to manage our poor little life upon so great reality as God is.

There no need to know who had the deeper trust in Jesus : the chief of the synagogue or the woman. it doesn’t matter. Our genuine trust in Christ is not linked to the length or accuracy  of  our Christian culture. Such culture should make things easier to live full of confidence, but sometimes it is not.  When we have a large knowledge of the Bible and theology  we perhaps expect an issue coming only from a reasonable approach of life.

No room for a real trust there. And we are only like a woman with a desire to be healed from diseases without the god will, we only seek our own life and not really the life of God inside ours.

That’s a point to consider. But in today’s Gospel a woman was searched by Jesus. Perhaps, we too are asked by Jesus who touched me?  When we come to attain mass we come with some desire to be touched by him. But too often in our spiritual mind we don’t have enough clearness to realize it. But we don’t have to worry, what we don’t know, he knows it very well: we have only to trust him.