Life That Overflows
Jesus' healing power
Announcements for June 26, 2021:
Our last Walmart Mass will be offered this weekend. Although the drive-in experience has been an important piece of our pandemic-weathering puzzle, we're hoping to not host another such Mass for some time.
The diocese's Corpus Christi food drive is ongoing. To participate, visit Catholic Charities' website to make a monetary donation. Filled grocery bags are due back this weekend.
Summer hours have begun at the rectory and school offices. Even with slightly limited availability, we will continue to be responsive to your needs as they arise.
As always, check out the Parishioner Portal for more announcements.
Dear Saints,
In successive weekends, we have seen Jesus' kingdom-of-God proclamation come to life. Whether in parable form or in action we have been challenged to imagine, grapple with, and give ourselves over to the power and mystery of God's loving rule.
Our Gospel passage this weekend is no different. In it, we are presented with a Markan Sandwich (or, in technical terms, an intercalation): the healing of a woman afflicted with hemorrhages in the middle of a two-part account of Jesus' raising Jairus' daughter from the dead.
Most commentators think that the account in the middle (the meat, if you will) makes the main point of the other two pieces more striking. I don't know that we need to say that, but we should definitely hold the sandwich together to get what Mark is trying to tell us.
What do we find when we do that with this particular passage? I think, most importantly, we discover the type and magnitude of the power at work in Jesus.
At Jesus' command, the 12-year-old child arose. We might not see it at first glance, but this is powerfully evocative language - the root word for the girl's recovery and for Jesus' rising from the dead is the same. In Jesus' resurrection, God conquers the enslaving power of sin and death. This power - the triumph of life over death - is already being brought to bear in Jesus' ministry.
Death-to-life power is at work in Jesus for healing, as we see in the narrative of the woman with hemorrhages. The power of God - the love of God - makes her alive where she is dead. Jesus gives her healing and wholeness where she is otherwise hopelessly wounded and broken.
These accounts give us a robust view of salvation, of God's determination to rescue us. By faith and baptism we have been brought from death to life (we have been saved), and by entrusting ourselves to Jesus we are being healed and made whole (we are being saved).
Like the woman it is ours to seek after Jesus, especially where we are wounded and broken. In Jesus we find fullness of life. In Jesus we find healing and wholeness.
I love you, my friends. Blessings on the beginning of your summer... I look forward to seeing you soon!
Christ's Peace,
Father Daniel
δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ
Preparing for Mass?
Check out this weekend's readings:
The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Encounter
Daniel Cariola, 2016