Not long after I was ordained, I was working as a hospital chaplain. I remember coming across a young girl of about 12 who was very sick. She was in the hospital several times and she eventually died. I can still see her pale dead body in the intensive care room and her poor parents who were completely devastated. I remember feeling so helpless as a chaplain. I have often prayed for them since. Every time I read today's Gospel I think of that little girl and her parents.
An event like that always brings up the most difficult questions. Why does God allow these things to happen? Why didn’t God heal her? The readings today address some of these questions. First of all death was not something that God intended for us. And although it is now a part of our earthly existence, it is only a stage of transformation, a doorway to another stage of our life with God. Our physical bodies die, but we don’t die.
The way that Jesus dealt with sickness and death also has a lot to teach us. Since Jesus was able to heal people and even bring people back from the dead, as He did on at least three occasions, why did He always want people to be quiet about it? In this Gospel He only allowed three of his disciples to be with him and when He got to the house He made as if the girl was not dead at all. Then He asked the family to keep the whole event quiet. Why? You would think that it would be in his favour if people knew and that He would have more respect and that people would listen to him. Perhaps it was because his primary role was not about healing people physically, even though he had great compassion for people who were sick. His main role involved three things:
1. To sacrifice himself for us for the forgiveness of sins, so that we might have eternal life with God when we die.
2. To show us that God is with us in our sufferings. Jesus freely accepting death on a cross showed us this.
3. To teach us about God and what our life is all about.
Jesus wanted to teach us that God is not interested in condemning us, or ‘catching us out,’ rather, that God has made us to be with him and that God will make that happen if we allow him to. During our time on earth God is gradually transforming us and helping us to become holy, or you could say, ‘the best version of ourselves’ that we can be. The teachings that Jesus left us with are the path which leads us through this gradual transformation, so that we become more like God all the time. Jesus is saying, ‘If you want to be transformed inside, then live the way that I am showing you. Spend your life loving and serving the people around you. Don’t put yourself first and don’t spend your whole life trying to store up a wealth that will disappear the day you die.’ If we get too focused on the world around us, we will miss what our life is really about.
It is tempting to think that that kind of life, living the Gospel, is only for a few people and that our own life is too difficult or too demanding to be like that; but that is not true. If it was not possible to live this way of life, then Jesus would not have taught us about it. The truth is that all of us are given endless opportunities to live the way Jesus taught us, because we are all the time being faced with difficult situations where we continually have to make a choice for good or evil. All of these choices are shaping us and making us into better or worse people. The good thing is that even if we have made a mess of many of the choices we’ve been given, God keeps giving us more, because God wants us to grow into the kind of people that He knows we can become. It is the ordinary struggles that we are faced with every day which are shaping us and making this happen.
Often at funerals I hear people speaking about the person who has died as if they are gone forever, their existence extinguished, nothing else, but to see it that way is to completely miss the point of what our faith teaches us. What Jesus has taught us is that while we are on earth we are all the time preparing for the world to come, something which is unimaginably wonderful. If we really believe that then we can quietly be happy for those who have gone before us, even though being separated from them is painful, because they have already reached it, at least if they have chosen it by the way they live.
Knowing that something wonderful awaits us should give us both comfort and hope for those who have died. Sooner or later we will also be there. When tragedy strikes, especially when someone dies young, we usually see it as the worst thing imaginable and in many respects it is. But if what we believe is true, then it means they have gone ahead of us sooner than we expected. When we die we will be reunited with them again. That is the greatest hope we have, because all of us want to be with our loved ones again and to be happy and that is what God promises is waiting for us.
God is all about life. When people ask why we are always talking about euthanasia and abortion, it is because God is all about life. The first commandment that God gave Adam and Eve was to go and bear fruit, multiply. He didn’t put any restrictions on that, telling us not to over-populate the world. Everywhere in Scripture references to new life are always seen as a blessing, never as a burden. God is all about life and that’s why God keeps creating more life.
Sadly we live in a culture of death, where life is often presented as a burden. That is the opposite of what God teaches us, which is why we must continually try and help people see what God shows us, that life is a gift, not a burden and only God is the giver of life.
When we decide who will live and who will die, we are playing God, which is exactly what Adam and Eve were tempted to do and exactly what God forbade them to do. The original sin was to play God and God warned them not to do this, because it would be too much for them. We see what happens in our world the more we try and do this. Chaos follows.
On that note, the bishops have asked us to make you aware of a very serious referendum coming up to do with abortion, where the state of Florida is trying to make abortion part of the constitution of Florida, up to full term and without any restrictions. There is more information about it on our website and I would encourage you to read up on it. As is often the case, the language is misleading, but it is really important that we vote against this.
Although we will continue to live in a world where the laws of God are rejected, our approach to life and his teachings are the best witness we can give and this is what the Lord asks us to do.
Jesus took the child by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum,”
which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise!”
The girl, a child of twelve, arose immediately and walked around.
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