Dear friends in Christ

The readings of the Mass this Sunday tell us about death and life. The first reading teaches us that death had no place in the initial plan of God for the human race: God did not make death, and He does not take delight in the death of the living. Jesus Christ accepted it as a necessity of nature, as an inevitable part of a man’s fate on earth. Jesus Christ accepted it, in order to overcome sin. Our human heart recoils in anguish when faced with death, but we are comforted by the knowledge that Jesus destroyed death. It is no longer the event that we must fear above all else. Rather it is, for the believer, the necessary step from this world to the Father. The Gospel of the Mass shows Jesus arriving at the house where the people had gathered. One of the rulers of the synagogue, was waiting anxiously for Jesus because his daughter was at the point of death. By the time He arrives, the girl was already dead. Nevertheless, Jesus brings the girl back to life even if they thought everything was lost. Jesus pays no attention to those who laughed at him and performs this great miracle for the child and her father.

The evangelists have handed down to us a small but significant human touch of Jesus: and He told them to give her something to eat. Jesus, perfect God and perfect man, is also interested in those matters that relate to our life here on earth. But He is far more interested in whatever concerns our eternal destiny. Saint Jerome comments on these words of Our Lord: the child is not dead, but sleeping. He points out that both things are true. It is as though He was saying, she is dead for you, but sleeping for me. If we love our bodily life, how much more should we esteem the life of our soul!

God bless you and keep you all in His Sacred Heart in this coming week.

Msgr Kevin Hale