13th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

Very recently some kindly Catholic doctors organised a health check programme for the priests of the diocese. The common observation is that priests do not take care of their physical and at times their psychological health. What was evident in the exercise was the familiar adage: Ignorance is bliss. Some priests did not want to undergo the barrage of questions and tests. They may have valid reasons for avoiding them and this is not a criticism of them because I was tempted to skip the whole process too. The abstention may just highlight the different approaches we all have towards the reality of dying and death.

The First Reading speaks of how death came to be. The short and simple answer is sin. But that is really old news. What is more alluring is the idea that we could have lived forever. If only Adam and Eve did not bite the forbidden fruit what a life we all would have. We could be so side-tracked by the loss of paradise that we might miss the truth that immortality is no guarantee against death. Even if Eve did not succumb to Satan’s wiles, immortality does not preclude death. It does not prevent death. For example, Adam could be strolling in the evening and forgot that the previous day, he had dug a deep ditch to allow water to flow from one pond to another. He stepped right into the longkang (drain) and missing a foothold, hit his head against the other side of the drain and he died. Immortality does not mean we will not die.

I suppose it makes sense that for many of us, death is a taboo topic. Thankfully, we have two miracles that Jesus performed in the Gospel and both are related to dying and the extent of death’s power over us. In one of the miracles, Jesus was approached directly whereas the other, furtively. Imagine the synagogue official who came to Jesus. An officer of THE religion coming to this upstart? A good analogy is like us Catholics who out of desperation careen from a bomoh pillar to a black-magic post to seek a cure. The other case was a haemorrhaging woman who tried to touch Jesus’ external garment ever so stealthily because she too was despondent after 12 years of having spent all she had and was none the better. Everyone was pressing against Jesus and yet He was conscious that power that flowed out of Him. How to explain this awareness? The closest parallel is benediction or blessing. When a priest blessed a rosary or many rosaries, he does not feel it. But when an array of religious articles have to be blessed, candles, statues/holy pictures of the Sacred Heart and our Lady, Cross of St Benedict. The simplest and the laziest way is to impart a general blessing. Short and easy. But if a priest takes time to follow the rite according to the article to be blessed, at the end of all the rites, he will feel like a punctured balloon.

In this sense, the second miracle in today’s Gospel is more than just physical death. In the first miracle involving the 12-year-old girl, it was physical death. She died before Jesus could reach her. Whereas the other involved a kind of social death where this woman who had suffered for 12 years knew that even a casual caress would render the other person dead ritually. As one ritually untouchable, she might as well be physically dead, since she was already a social reject.

The inevitability of death it is not really an issue. In a way we are resigned to it and we handle it by putting it off our minds. Somehow or rather, we accept that we will die but always in the nebulous future. The many who have died intestate is not only proof that we keep death at arm’s length but also we have not really come to terms with it. What slaps us more in the face is not the inevitability but rather the finality of death. It is simply the experience of here today and gone tomorrow. How many of us have this experience of having spoken or met with someone and then receive news of the other person’s unexpected death.

The Gospel shows the power of Jesus over death. But the message is not just the physical restoration of the 12-year-old and the social restoration of the woman with a haemorrhage. Both miracles are invitations to faith in Christ Jesus. For Jairus, his faith journey was a trying test. So public and so urgent was his approach to Jesus only to be interrupted by the delay in the healing of another. Jesus’ response to Him was to continue trusting. This is in fact an experience we all know too well. We pray and yet God does not seem to answer. The message is to keep faith in Jesus. Do not lose hope.

We see how this is played out in the older woman. She symbolises a 12-year journey of faith and interestingly, her pilgrimage carries us into the heart of our Sacramental system. Her faith was profound as she reasoned that only a touch of His cloak was enough to heal her. “Maybe I will not contaminate Him so much, all I need to do is just to touch the fringes of His cloak”. This sort of faith is deeply Catholic. Go to St Peter’s in Rome and notice the right foot of the Rock upon whom Christ built His Church. It has been touched until the toes have all but disappeared.

Such is the extent of faith and the woman’s attempt to touch Christ’s cloak has provided the basis for the veneration of the relics of saints. Faith is the necessary bridge we cross to enter into the sacramental reality of Christ and His Church. But like Jairus, faith does not remove anxiety nor lessen our pains. Much like the long-suffering woman, faith is no guarantee that God’s answer is immediate. What faith grants us is the strength to hold on to Christ as He says time and again, “Have faith in me”. Even if death is final, ultimately what faith in Him does for each one of us is to remove death’s terror because with Him, death becomes a transition, a doorway. He Himself knows the fullness of death. Through the Last Rites, the Viaticum is the continuation of our act of faith in Him because Holy Communion, the promise of eternal life, gives us strength to make the final journey from this life to the next.