Dear Saints,

If you thumb through the course catalogs of major universities, you’ll see that many offer classes dedicated to the Book of Wisdom; even secular institutions recognize its historical and practical significance. Written in Greek in about 50 BC, nearly every line reflects the author’s scholarly command of earlier Old Testament writings and an intimate understanding of what’s to come. So we can take him seriously when he says in today’s first reading that “by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who belong to his company experience it.”

It’s a shocking way to think about death. Most of us are resigned to its inevitability, yet this makes it sound like a choice. And if the author is correct - and we have every reason to believe he is - the company we keep is the crux of that decision.

Today’s Gospel introduces us to figures desperate to keep Jesus’s company, even if it had to be the most tenuous connection possible. One was learned and one was not, but both somehow knew that a single word or touch would lock them into his restorative power. All they had to do was choose him, and he would do the rest. He would save them from the forces of death and see to their wholeness in every respect: mind, body, heart, and soul.

Every time we choose Jesus, he does the same for us. From an angle of skepticism it might seem impossible to the point of ridiculous, but we know from centuries of wisdom that he is in fact on a rescue mission, and we’re the ones he’s come to rescue.

Christ’s Peace,

Father Daniel

δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ