Homily: 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, B

Deacon Tony Cecil

Homily: 13th Sunday OT, B (July 1, 2018)

Epiphany Catholic Church, Louisville, KY

She was a complete and total outcast.

Everywhere she went, people stared. People mumbled things about her to one another as she walked by.

She wasn’t welcome—well, really, anywhere.

Everyone said that she was suffering because she was a sinner.

They said that she was unclean in everyone’s eyes, including God’s.

She wasn’t allowed to go to synagogues or the temple.

She wasn’t allowed to be touched or to touch others—people wouldn’t even go near her.

She was alone, and she was suffering.

Then, one day, she did something—unbelievable. She touched someone.

Great crowds were gathered in the streets of her town, all surrounding this one man, all pushing up against him, asking for miracles. This man, they said, was the Son of God. He had done marvelous things—He had healed many people.

This woman had done everything that she could think of doing—she went to doctor after doctor, and spent every bit of her money trying to get help, but was only left worse than she was before. This man—this healer, was her last chance. She was someone who was not allowed to approach God in the eyes of her community, and yet, there was something about this man that was different—there was something about him that gave her the courage to do what she needed to do.

She began moving through the crowds—, people jumping to the side to avoid the risk of being touched and becoming unclean. That man, Jesus, was getting further away—she knew if she called out for him the others would try to stop her. So she thought—Even if I touch his clothes that will be enough. So she stretched out her hand as far as she could, and did it. She touched him. She who was supposed to touch no one touched him.

She had stretched so far that she fell to the ground—she sat to up see—that it worked! Her bleeding had stopped. The suffering that she had endured for twelve long and agonizing years was over. Her life was totally changed in the blink of an eye. But, how could this be? How could she have spent years seeing doctor after doctor and doing everything she could and nothing worked—but as soon as she touched the hem of this man’s garment, she was cured?

Jesus gives us the answer. Looking at her with eyes of mercy, he says, Daughter, your faith has saved you.

It almost seems too simple. It was this woman’s faith that healed her.

But, what is faith?

The great British author, CS Lewis, once said that faith is the art of holding on to things in spite of your changing moods and circumstances. In other words, faith is the rock that we cling to when the storms of life try to overwhelm us. Faith is the trust that we place in God’s hands—clinging to the knowledge that God is present in the midst of the storm and that we are loved—no matter what.

But, this isn’t easy. We may like to think of faith as something different. So often, we like to paint faith as something that is in reality very shallow. We try to see our faith as some kind of magical reality that takes away all of our hardships—we can sometimes believe that faith gets rid of the things that we don’t want to deal with.

Pope Francis describes faith by saying that it is not a light which scatters all our darkness, but a lamp which guides our steps in the night and suffices for the journey. In other words, our faith is not going to totally take our problems away, but it will guide us in the task of navigating through them to the end. Pope Francis goes on to say, to those who suffer, God does not provide arguments which explain everything; rather, God’s response is an accompanying presence. (Francis, Encyclical Lumen Fidei, 57).

That’s exactly what we see played out in today’s Gospel. Jesus doesn’t give this woman an explanation as to why the past twelve years of her life have been so awful—he doesn’t tell her a reason that she’s suffered so much. He praises her faith—a faith that was strong—a faith that she had been building up for this moment.

I don’t believe that the woman in today’s Gospel saw Jesus and was suddenly filled with a faith in God. I believe that her faith had been put into practice over those many years—all those times that she saw doctor after doctor, every time she was rejected from the temple, but instead prayed to God in the secret of her own heart. I believe that this woman practiced having faith often, and it was this practice that gave her the strength to do something unthinkable—to reach out and touch Jesus.

Her faith serves as an example.

First, it serves as an example to Jarius—the synagogue official whose daughter was dying. We know that the synagogue officials weren’t the biggest fans of Jesus, but there he was, asking for Jesus’ help. Right after they encounter this woman, and Jarius sees her faith—someone comes to tell him that his daughter was dead. There was no point in Jesus coming to his house; there was nothing anyone could do. Jesus looks at Jarius and says—Don’t be afraid, just have faith. And he does—he decides that Jesus was still going to see his daughter. He had faith, and because of that faith, his daughter was raised from her sleep.

But even more so, this woman’s faith serves as an example to us.

A lot of times, we like to doubt ourselves, and believe that we are not capable of having such faith. We are so quick to pull out our list of excuses. We are so quick to neglect the small opportunities we are given to grow in our faith, to grow in our relationship with God, because we tell ourselves the lie that we can’t, or that we aren’t good enough.

So today, let us pay attention to the example of this woman—this woman who was a total outcast. This woman who was not welcome anywhere—this woman who no one wanted to be around—and let us have faith.

Have real faith. Have profound faith. Have bold faith. Have unshakable faith.

And the beautiful thing is, faith is something that is already inside of you! You have faith because you were baptized. You have faith because you are here today. You have faith because it is a gift given to us by God in abundance.

We just have to use it.

That’s the challenging part. Having faith takes a lot of work. Having faith requires that we give up our desire to control everything.

Faith isn’t a nicely framed bible passage, or an inspirational story shared on social media. Faith is the hard work of keeping the course when life gets rough—faith is that light that illumines the footpath through the darkness. And like anything else, it is something that takes practice.

Brothers and sisters, we need to start practicing our faith. It needs to be strong. It needs to be strong enough to support us when it feels like nothing else will. And it’s not going to happen by some dramatic shift all at once—it’s not going to be the instant gratification that we are so used to.

Our faith becomes strong by putting it to practice in small ways—by practicing what we see in today’s Gospel—reaching out to Jesus for help. Our faith grows strong by believing with all that we have that it is Jesus who brings calm to our chaos, and it is Jesus who can change our lives forever.

And so today, let us begin—let us begin to reach to Jesus for help—let us begin to put our faith into practice…and it can be simple:

When we wake up in the morning, we can make the first thing we do a short prayer thanking God for the gift of a new day.

We could be unafraid of praying with our families before sharing dinner at a restaurant.

When we find ourselves stressed out, we could just take a couple of seconds to breathe and pray one of the most simple and freeing prayers I know—Jesus, I trust in you.

And we can make it a point to come here to this place and to do it often—to encounter Jesus—the same Jesus who raised Jarius’ daughter from the dead—the same Jesus who healed the suffering woman—the same Jesus who was amazed at their faith can be amazed at ours, as well.

We can come to this place to see him in one another—or in the beauty and the quiet that surrounds us.

We can come to this place to pray—to talk to him.

We can come to this place to seek the forgiveness of our sins in the sacrament of reconciliation.

We can come to this place to receive his very person—Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, in the tremendous gift of the Eucharist, just as we will in a few moments.

And when we do this—when we take practicing our faith more seriously than we do now—we will slowly begin to see changes: courage where there was fear, patience where there was impatience, strength where there was weakness, faith where there was doubt,

And we will truly become the hands and feet of Christ in the world, reaching out to others, helping them to have a life-changing encounter with Christ, just as we have.

Today, let us take the first step. Let us listen to and take seriously the words of Jesus as we encounter his very person in this celebration—just have faith.

Readings: Wisdom 1: 13-15, 2: 23-24; Psalm 30: 2, 4, 5-6, 11-13; 2 Corinthians 8: 7, 9, 13-15; Mark 5: 21-42 (New American Bible)

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