YEAR B: HOMILY FOR THE THIRTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (9)

YEAR B: HOMILY FOR THE THIRTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

HOMILY THEME: REMEMBER THAT GOD IS ALWAYS THERE WITH YOU EVEN IN YOUR DARK MOMENTS

BY: Fr Cyril Unachukwu CCE

 

HOMILY:

There are some moments in life when the situations around us and the conditions of life leave us in a state of desolation and despair and with experiences of severe physical pain and the lost of parts of the things that constitute our hope and aspirations. In such dark moments of life, God is always there with us. May His presence always bring to us an eradication of our sources of pain and grief; Amen.

The Gospel Reading of today (Mk 5:21-43) presents to us two miracles of our Lord Jesus Christ, the raising of Jairus’ daughter from the dead and the healing of the woman suffering from haemorrhage. In each of these miracles, we see the face of humanity collectively and individually plagued by one problem or the other. It can never be overemphasised that as our faces are different so also are our problems and challenges and pains. One central message we must take from today’s Gospel narrative is the fact that God remains the only true and sure source of the solution to all of our problems, challenges, difficulties, pains and sufferings. From Jairus and this woman, we are invited to learn to bring our problems to God in humility, even when they seem most impossible because “with man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God” (Mk 10:27).

One of the challenges of our times is the utopia of thinking that, by ourselves, we can provide the solutions to all of our problems and challenges and that our inability to provide such solutions from human realm renders such cases impossible and closed. Irrespective of how far the human mind may have gone in the quest of providing solutions, new cases and problems face us on a daily basis, reminding us of the limited nature of human intelligence and ingenuity and of the fact that whatever the human mind has been able to achieve depends on the One who is Omniscient. The Gospel Reading of today is reminding us to learn to turn to God in humility for the true solutions to the challenges of life. This involves the humility never to stop at the level of man and the natural on our search for solutions to our problems and the humility never to conclude a case as impossible because our human cognitive powers have failed us. God remains the Arbiter and to Him we must make recourse to for it is only in Him that we truly receive the solution we seek and He is always close to us in the person of Christ the Emmanuel.

The presence of Christ in our midst is a lived experience in the Church, in the Word of God, in the sacraments especially in the Eucharist and in our brothers and sisters. This presence makes the difference in the lives of all of us, making us feel God’s plan for us and to confirm the fact that “the world’s created things have health in them, in them no fatal poison can be found, and hades holds no power on earth” (Wis 1:13-15, 2:23-24). It is only God who truly holds power on earth and it is this divine power that brings us calm, healing, solution and resurrection in moments of troubles and difficulties. The power that flows from the generosity of Christ who “was rich but became poor for our sake, to make us rich out of His poverty” (2 Cor 8:7, 9, 13-15). This was exactly the experience of Jairus’ daughter and the woman suffering from haemorrhage. This will be our experience too if we learn in humility to bring our problems to God.

May God’s presence in our midst bring us healing and resuscitation to areas of our lives we may have classified as dead; Amen.

Happy Sunday and Happy New Month; Fr Cyril Unachukwu CCE

 

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