XIII Sunday in Ordinary Time

By: Father José Miguel González Martín

June 27, 2021

God created man incorruptible and made him in the image of his own being.

Jesus Christ, being rich, became poor for us to enrich us with his poverty.

Jesus said to her: “With you I speak, child, get up.”

 

Readings

 

First reading

Reading of the Book of Wisdom 1, 13-15; 2, 23-24

God did not make death nor does He take pleasure in destroying the living.
He created everything to subsist and the creatures of the world are healthy: there is no poison of death in them, nor does the abyss reign on earth.
Because justice is immortal.
God created man incorruptible and made him in the image of his own being; but out of envy of the devil, death entered the world, and those on his side experience it.

 

Psalm

Ps. 29, 2 and 4. 5-6. 11-12a and 13b

R / I will praise you, Lord, because you have delivered me.

I will exalt you, Lord, because you have delivered me

and you have not let my enemies laugh at me.
Lord, you drew my life from the abyss,
You made me come alive when I went down to the pit. R.

Play for the Lord, his faithful ones, give thanks to his holy name;
his anger lasts a moment; his goodness, for life;
at sunset he visits us crying; in the morning, the jubilation. R.

Hear, Lord, and have mercy on me; Lord, help me.
You changed my mourning into dancing. Lord my God, I will thank you forever. R.

 

Second lecture

A reading from the second letter of Saint Paul to Corinthians 8, 7. 9. 13-15

Brothers:
Just as they excel in everything – in faith, in words, in knowledge, in commitment and in the love that we have communicated to them – they also excel in this work of charity.
For they know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, being rich, became poor for us to enrich us with his poverty.
Well, it is not about relieving others, going through hardships; it’s about matching. At this moment, your abundance remedies your lack, so that their abundance remedies your lack; so there will be equality.
As it is written:
“He who gathered much did not have excess; and those who collected little did not lack ”.

 

Gospel

A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark 5: 21-43

At that time, Jesus crossed again in a boat to the other shore, many people gathered around him, and he stayed by the sea.
He was approached by a chief of the synagogue, whose name was Jairo, and, seeing him, he threw himself at his feet, insistently begging him:
“My girl is in the last; Come from her, lay your hands on her, so that she heals and lives ”.
He went with him and many people followed him.
They came from the house of the head of the synagogue to tell him:
“Your daughter has died. Why bother the teacher more?
Jesus overheard what they were talking about and said to the head of the synagogue:
“Do not worry; it is enough that you have faith ”.
He did not allow anyone to accompany him, other than Pedro, Santiago, and Juan, Santiago’s brother. They arrived at the house of the head of the synagogue and he found the commotion of those who were crying and lamenting loudly and after entering he told them:
“What noise and what tears are these? The girl is not dead, she is asleep ”.
They laughed at him. But he threw them all out and, with the girl’s father and mother and her companions, he entered where the girl was, took her by the hand and said:
“Talitha qumi” (which means: “With you I speak, girl, get up”).
The girl got up immediately and started walking; she was twelve years old. And they were left beside themselves full of stupor.
She insisted that no one find out; and he told them to feed the girl.

 

Commentary

 

Today’s Word of God immerses us in the essentials of life and its end. In the current pandemic situation we have all wondered about the meaning of what we are, have and do. Feeling the breath of death near us, indiscriminately, that has taken away perhaps well-known people, close and in good health, has made us wonder about what is truly worthwhile, about the meaning of our struggles and efforts, for what we spend time on or what we should spend it for, for our relationships, for our jobs, our children, our future. Life, our lives … what a profound mystery!

The first reading, taken from the Book of Wisdom, marks us some simple and precious guidelines to delve into this mystery of life that fill us with light and hope, in the face of the anguish and restlessness that we could feel without believing in God. We are reminded that God has created us in his image, that is, as spiritual and eternal beings, called to life forever. For God does not give to then take away or deprive but to bring to fullness. God does not enjoy the punishment or destruction of humanity, quite the contrary. He is not guilty of the evils that plague us caused on many occasions by our negligence and selfishness. He has not created evil nor is there evil in all that He has created. He is the owner and lord of life and of our lives.

It is important to note that the Scripture speaks on many occasions of death with a double meaning… bodily physical death and spiritual death. This second, the death of the spirit, is considered a consequence of sin whose origin is in the evil one. While physical death, that of the body, is considered something inherent to our expired nature, a necessary step to the fullness of immortality and incorruptibility with God. Today we are expressly told: “God has not made death.” That is, God does not want evil to destroy our spirit, the noblest and highest of each one of us.

In today’s Gospel, which we offer in its short version, Jesus is presented to us as Lord of life. There are many very interesting details in this passage. The first of these is that Jesus continues to teach and train his disciples with words and deeds. He had shown them how he could heal the sick and master the harshness of nature. Today, he wants to show you something that goes beyond… he can bring someone back to life who has lost it.

Also here we can point out that Scripture offers us a double concept of life, physical and spiritual, that intentionally walk in parallel and in continuous reference. Jesus heals physical diseases (blind, lame, lepers …), but above all he heals diseases of the spirit by forgiving sins and communicating the mercy of the Father. Jesus is going to resurrect, to give physical and corporeal life back to the daughter of Jairus, but he is also capable of giving back the life of the spirit to those he has lost through sin.

There are other important details in the passage that Saint Mark offers us. Before the news that reaches Jairo about the death of his daughter and the invitation of his relatives not to bother the Master, Jesus tells him: “Do not fear, it is enough that you have faith.” Those of us who have faith in God, those of us who believe in Him, know well that thanks to faith we have been saved on many occasions, that we have risen from our diseases and deaths, that we have come back to life. But we must also recognize that we have not always maintained the necessary faith, that we have doubted, that we have tired, we have even been on the verge of denying our good Father God. Faith is certainly a gift from God, just like life. And we have to ask for it constantly.

Another important detail is the attitude of Jesus towards the mourners and those who cried and lamented loudly, who curiously end up laughing derisively at Jesus himself. He kicks them all out. Certainly the death of someone close and dear hurts a lot and produces great sadness that it is good to express and express; but it cannot be trivialized with superficialisms or used with interest. The death of a person is the supreme moment of his life, the culmination, the passage to God’s eternity, and for this reason it must be lived with peace, serenity, dignity, respect, gratitude, as a sacred moment that we overflows and leads to the mystery of life itself. We say it seldom, almost never: in life we ​​prepare for everything except to die. How important it is that, with peace, with faith, without anguish or obsession, we prepare ourselves and help others to prepare for the supreme moment in which we will meet face to face with the God who created us, with our good and merciful Father. .

And while we live… generosity and more generosity. That is what St. Paul asks of the Corinthians to alleviate the needs of other Christians, those of Jerusalem, who were poorer and needy. And he argues it from the very image of Christ, that being God he became a man through one of many, that being rich he became poor for us to enrich us with his poverty. The Christian’s generosity cannot be a mere act of compassion or altruism. It must always be an act of gratitude towards the Lord who has given us so much, from whom we have received everything, first and foremost, his own life. And we thank him by giving him in others, our brothers, his brothers, everything that is within our reach and we can share.

Finally: “Thalita qumi … I’ll talk to you … get up.” These impressive words of Jesus must resonate in the depths of each one of us, particularly in moments of weakness, disappointment, and death. Perhaps we are dead of fear, of fatigue, of pain, of longing for changes and transformations. Perhaps we have been killed by innocence and illusion, the desire to live, to be otherwise, of honest and shared happiness. But Jesus tells us, he tells you: “With you I speak … get up.” Get up from your sins and your deaths, from your miseries and lies, from your vicious circles and redundant entelechies, from your perverse and evil fantasies, from your cowardice and negligence, from your complicit silences and your interested pretenses, from your selfishness and self-centeredness, of your laziness and excuses, of your pride and arrogance, of everything that destroys you and does not let you live in the freedom of the children of God. “I talk to you … get up.”

 

Prayer

I gave you so little, Lord Jesus, but You made such a great thing out of it!

I am so little before You, and You have made me so rich!

I could not give you everything that I would have wanted,

nor did I manage to love you as I wanted and dreamed of.

I gave you so little, really, so little,

and with little enthusiasm and joy.

However, you know that in that “little” I wanted to put all my heart.

You see the bottom of myself, with my desire to give you much more.

How you transform my poverty into wealth, and my emptiness in fullness,

take my gift as it is, take also all that it is not,

so that in me there is total surrender, with my own misery,

and let everything be recreated again by the sovereign power of your love. Amen

 

(Father Ignacio Larrañaga)

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