13th Sunday Ordinary Time June 30, 2024

Readings: Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24, 2 Corinthians 8:7, 9, 13-15, Mark 5:21-43

It is belief in Jesus that changes our lives. The Gospel today gives us miracles. The most important aspect of these miracles is not the physical healing but the absolute belief of those asking for a miracle. Jairus doesn’t know where to turn to seek healing for his daughter. Necessity can draw us to the Lord. We hear from others that Jesus is Lord and can change lives and even work miracles. Others would tell us that it is all a hoax. At some point in our lives, we must choose and make a commitment. The woman with hemorrhages for twelve year is breaking all kinds of religious practice rules. On the other hand, she believes that Jesus can cure her. The power goes out of Jesus and does cure her.

Both of these accounts are meant to challenge us: will you believe? Or will you just stay in the crowd because you are not sure what else there is? Lots of us can stay in the Church because we are afraid to leave the Church. Yet we don’t make a commitment to the Church. Our belief in Jesus is at that same level: sort of.

The Book of Wisdom today is quite clear that God did not make death but that death comes about because of sin. When we live in faith, death ceases to be a concern to us because we are living. The Second Letter to the Corinthians presents us with this meditation: Jesus Christ, though he was rich, for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.

All three readings today invite us to choose for God, for life and for complete trust in God’s work in Jesus Christ. They invite us to believe in the Church as well because it is through others that we come to know Jesus. Just as some of the people in the time of Jesus could not accept Him as Lord because they knew His family and knew His background, so also some of the people today cannot accept the Church because of seeing all of its sinfulness and defects. What do you choose? What will I choose? We can walk with the Lord Jesus on His way and with complete trust or we can take some other path. What do you choose?

Fr. Terry