"Lord, save us! We are perishing!"

He said to them, "Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?"

-- Mt 8:23-27

Just as Jesus prays to the Father and gives thanks before receiving his gifts, so he teaches us filial boldness: "Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you receive it, and you will." Such is the power of prayer and of faith that does not doubt: "all things are possible to him who believes." Jesus is as saddened by the "lack of faith" of his own neighbors and the "little faith" of his own disciples as he is struck with admiration at the great faith of the Roman centurion and the Canaanite woman.

--CCC 2610

Celebrating the Sacerdotal Year: this image of Christ the High Priest is recommended by the US Bishops for the Celebration of the Sacerdotal Year. More information may be found by clicking on this link.

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(Liturgy of Week 13, Tuesday, Year I)

Oldest image of Saint Paul discovered in Rome: "I, Paul, am ... being poured out"

I, Paul, am already being poured out like a libation, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith.
From now on the crown of righteousness awaits me, which the Lord, the just judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but to all who have longed for his appearance.

-- 2 Tm 4:6-8, 17-18

The way of perfection passes by way of the Cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle. Spiritual progress entails the ascesis and mortification that gradually lead to living in the peace and joy of the Beatitudes:

He who climbs never stops going from beginning to beginning, through beginnings that have no end. He never stops desiring what he already knows.

-- CCC 2015

(Photo: Image of a 1600-year-old fresco discovered in a Roman catacomb on June 19, 2009 and published by L'Osservatore Romano. It is believed to be the oldest known image of Saint Paul. More on the story here and here. Pope Benedict has also announced that what appear to be bone fragments of the saint have been discovered in his tomb at the Basilica of Saint Paul-Outside-the-Walls in Rome. More on the story here.)

"Do not be afraid, just have Faith."

The greatest disease or suffering, the greatest privation for the human person, is to live without faith.

In the Gospel the Lord exercises His power as God to reverse the course of nature and to restore life and health to those suffering sickness in body. As wonderful as these stories of miraculous healing may be, as much as we delight to hear them retold in our Mass this morning and to imagine the wonder and joy of those who saw and experienced the Divine power of Christ the healer, there is yet something more we need to have. We need Faith.

Disease and death have power over us because they can cause us to be fearful. Fear takes away the goodness and joy of living; fear takes away our hope. The only power that can restore hope and joy is Faith – the grace of a God that who opens a future for us despite the existence of disease, suffering and death in this world. Faith opens up a way of trust and hope because it reveals for us that disease, suffering and death will not have the last word for us and for those we love.

This is the reason why Christ says “Do not be afraid, just have Faith.” Christ gives a command in the Gospel this morning that we do not find surprising because we have heard him say it before, he tells us, “Do not be afraid, just have faith.” Have you ever wanted to tell someone who says this, “Easy for you to say.” We are tempted to respond in this way when we think that the person who is speaking to us cannot share in or understand our condition. Are you tempted to think you might have said this, or wanted to say this, to Christ if you had been there that day to witness the events we hear about in the Gospel? “Just have faith”: little words that demand great things. But was it “easy” for Christ to say this? No, it was not. Christ in his human nature experienced everything that we experience except for sin. This means that Christ the God-man needed to have Faith in his Father in the same way as He asks us to exercise this virtue.

Christ teaches us with compassion that comes from fully sharing in our human condition as well as from His divine authority as God. “Do not be afraid, just have faith.” Christ can say these words in a truly compassionate and loving way because He does not say them merely with authority. He is not only the Teacher, the one who shares the truth about Faith with us. No, what is more, He Himself is Faith, the source of Faith for all of us whom He invites today to live a new kind of life, a different kind of life, a life without fear. What does it mean to “have Faith?” It means to “have Christ”; to “love” Christ. Christ invites us to possess Him, and in having Him, having also the antidote to the temptation of fear.

There are other diseases we do not hear about in the Gospel today: the fear brought by poverty, the fear of loneliness and of old age; the fear of what the future might bring; the fear of losing one’s job or one’s home. For a priest the promise to obey his bishop and to go wherever he is sent to serve God’s people might bring a temptation to be fearful. All of these fears rob life of joy because they steal our hope.

We are invited today to possess the One who opens the way to hope as we move toward the future: Jesus Christ, who alone can promise to love us no matter what we look like, or where we live, or how much money we make. Jesus Christ fully shares our human nature so that we can share in His Divine life which never ends and which alone is victorious over all that threatens to rob us of hope in this world which is so very temporary, whether disease or suffering or death.

Christ invites us to possess Him, to open our lives to the treasure of His love. He also gives us the means of doing so: to sincerely open ourselves to His Word in the sacred Scriptures and to receive Him with Faith and love as He gives Himself to us, truly present in the Eucharist.

Let us dedicate ourselves with fervent joy to these works of love, doing in this way exactly as the Lord invites us today, “Do not be afraid, just have Faith."

(Art: Christ and the woman subject to bleeding, BOULLOGNE, Louis de, Oil on canvas, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes.)

THIRTEENTH Sunday in Ordinary Time: "Do not be afraid; just have faith."

Wisdom 1, 13-15; 2, 23-24; Psalm 30; 2 Corinthians 8: 7. 9. 13-15; St. Mark 5: 21-43

Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Jesus' raising the dead to life was remarkable, and his healing of the woman afflicted with a hemorrhage was remarkable, but the prophets had also healed the sick, the blind and the lame and the prophets had also raised the dead. These raisings and healings were a return to, or restoration of, mere earthly existence. There is more!

There is something more offered to us in Jesus that sets him completely apart as the Christ. These miraculous events portend the same reality, whether coming through the prophets or Christ: eternal life. Our resurrection will be possible only in and with the divine person of Jesus Christ. We must be in bodily union with him if we wish to be raised as he was from the dead to the glorified state of resurrection.

Jesus links faith in the resurrection to his own person: "I am the Resurrection and the life." It is Jesus himself who on the last day will raise up those who have believed in him, who have eaten his body and drunk his blood. Already now in this present life he gives a sign and pledge of this by restoring some of the dead to life, announcing thereby his own Resurrection, though it was to be of another order. He speaks of this unique event as the "sign of Jonah," the sign of the temple: he announces that he will be put to death but rise thereafter on the third day. CCC 994

I look forward to meeting you here again next week as, together, we "meet Christ in the liturgy", Father Cusick

Meeting Christ in the Liturgy (Publish with permission.)

(Photo by author: Italian priest and pilgrims pray at the Basilica of Saint Paul outside the Walls.)

"He cured all the sick"

When it was evening, they brought him many who were possessed by demons, and he drove out the spirits by a word and cured all the sick, to fulfill what had been said by Isaiah the prophet:

He took away our infirmities
and bore our diseases.

-- Mt 8:5-17

Moved by so much suffering Christ not only allows himself to be touched by the sick, but he makes their miseries his own: "He took our infirmities and bore our diseases." But he did not heal all the sick. His healings were signs of the coming of the Kingdom of God. They announced a more radical healing: the victory over sin and death through his Passover. On the cross Christ took upon himself the whole weight of evil and took away the "sin of the world," of which illness is only a consequence. By his passion and death on the cross Christ has given a new meaning to suffering: it can henceforth configure us to him and unite us with his redemptive Passion.

-- CCC 1505

(Holy water font in the Basilica of Saint Paul outside the Walls symbolizes the exorcism of grace in Christ which "drives out demons" and brings healing to body and soul.)

"Lord ... you can make me clean."

"Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean."

-- Mt 8:1-4

Very often in the Gospels people address Jesus as "Lord". This title testifies to the respect and trust of those who approach him for help and healing. At the prompting of the Holy Spirit, "Lord" expresses the recognition of the divine mystery of Jesus. In the encounter with the risen Jesus, this title becomes adoration: "My Lord and my God!" It thus takes on a connotation of love and affection that remains proper to the Christian tradition: "It is the Lord!"

-- CCC 448

(Celebrating the Year of St. Paul: German pilgrims pray before the relic of Paul's chains displayed above his sarcophagus in the Basilica of Saint Paul outside the Walls of Rome.)

"Not everyone who says 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven"

Jesus said to his disciples:
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,'
will enter the Kingdom of heaven,
but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

-- Mt 7:21-29

The prayer of faith consists not only in saying "Lord, Lord," but in disposing the heart to do the will of the Father. Jesus calls his disciples to bring into their prayer this concern for cooperating with the divine plan.

-- CCC 2611

By prayer we can discern "what is the will of God" and obtain the endurance to do it. Jesus teaches us that one enters the kingdom of heaven not by speaking words, but by doing "the will of my Father in heaven."

-- CCC 2826

(Celebrating the Year of Saint Paul: Romanesque cloisters of the monastery at the Basilica of Saint Paul outside the Walls. Photo by author.)