Homily for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B - 6/30/2024)

Last weekend, I had the blessed opportunity to accompany 35 of our youth to Irving, TX for the Steubenville Lone Star youth conference. I witnessed 4,000 youth worship God with praise and songs and receive Jesus in the Eucharist. I witnessed thousands of youth go to Reconciliation and receive God's mercy and forgiveness. I witnessed 4,000 youth wept during the Eucharistic procession because they were overwhelmed by Jesus' love for them. I witnessed almost a hundred youth share their desire to discern the priesthood and religious life. There was no doubt in my mind that Spirit of God lit the flame of faith in the hearts of our youth, so much so that over twenty (20) unbaptized non-Catholic youth present at the conference professed their desire to be baptized and come into full communion with the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, and received a special blessing from a priest.

Their zeal for their faith was refreshing, inspiring, and invigorating. Their love for Jesus in the Eucharist brought tears of joy to my eyes. Throughout the weekend, I prayed with our youth and had the chance to talk with several of them. One of them asked me about my call to the diaconate because he felt God’s call to him to the vocation of a religious brother. As I shared with him the story of my call to the diaconate, my wife encouraged me to share with him my conversion story as well. You see, Jesus called me to come and follow him at a time in my life when I felt this deep sense of hopelessness because someone I love was ill mentally. Like Jairus in today’s Gospel. I fell at Jesus’ feet and pleaded earnestly with God to heal this person. In my vulnerability - as I lay sprawled out on the floor of my friend’s living room, sobbing - God gave me the strength and courage to surrender my life to Him and entrust my loved one to His merciful care and healing. By the grace of God, this person made a full recovery and, as for me, I died to self and have been following our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ ever since. 

In today’s Gospel, Jairus embodies any one of us that has someone who is suffering, sick or dying. Our hearts ache for Jairus because we can feel the fear, anxiety, desperation, and pain in Jairus’ voice as he begged Jesus: “My daughter is at the point of death. Please, come lay your hands on her that she may get well and live." In times of illness and loss, it is incredibly difficult for us to comprehend, much less accept, that God, who we profess in the Creed to be “the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth” and “the Lord, the giver of life.” would let our loved ones suffer and even die. Yet, our faith in the same one true God impels us to believe and trust that He does not find pleasure in the death of any of His children (Ez. 18:23, 33:11). Wisdom tells us: “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living. . . But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world” (Wis. 1:13, 16). Suffering and death are consequences of our fallen humanity, as St. Paul noted: ”through one person sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all” (Rom. 5:12)..

However, we do not despair in times of loss but find hope in these words of Jesus in his teaching on the Beatitudes at the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Mt. 5:4). Our faith in God gives us confidence in the knowledge that our story and those of our loved ones do not end in death, “[for] God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (Jn. 3:16). For this reason, Christ said to Jairus (and us): "Do not be afraid; just have faith." We are comforted by Jesus who, at the Last Supper, on the night before he was to suffer and die on the Cross, said to his disciples (and us): “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. . . I am going to prepare a place for you. . . [and] I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. Where [I] am going you know the way. . . I am the way and the truth* and the life” (Jn. 14:1-4, 6). Jesus wants us to “bother” him in our time of loss and so we do not “hesitate to help those who have died and to offer our prayers for them” (St. John Chrysostom).

More importantly, when we experience loss and wonder how we can move forward, let us we recall this advice from St. Rose of Viterbo, who tells us to “[live] so as not to fear death. For those who live well in the world, death is not frightening. . .” because the Good News is, “[we] were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead. . . we too might live in newness of life. . . we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him” (Rom. 6:4, 8). Every time we say “Yes” to God and crucify our old self with Jesus (6:6), we say “No” to the things of this world that separate us from God’s love and mercy. This is how we move forward after suffering a loss and continue to live our life. We die to self so that we may live in newness of life with Christ, to live well in the world, to “go on. . . take a step, step again. . . toward the light. . . to do the next right thing. . .” (Anna, “Frozen II”), for God and for our loved ones who are still here with us. Now, what is the next right thing, you ask? 

Jesus gave us a model to follow while he hung on the Cross. Our Lord said to his Mother, “Woman, behold your son,” and then to the disciple whom he loved, he said, “Behold, your mother” (John 19:26-27). In that tender moment from the Cross, Christ gives us to each other so that we may be his instruments of comfort for one another. For us here at Saint Albert the Great, the next right thing could be helping the Lazarus Society comfort families who are mourning the loss of their loved one by assisting with the funeral Mass for the faithful departed and the reception afterwards. The next right thing could also be joining the bereavement small group to help our fellow parishioners mourn and cope with loss in their lives so that they can find healing and comfort in their Catholic faith to move toward the light. With the bereavement small group, loss is not limited to the loss of loved ones but one’s experience of loss in a much broader sense - such as the loss of a job or the loss of a beloved family pet or, perhaps, even the loss of our “favorite” priests or deacons who have moved on to their new parish assignments.

We all experience loss in different ways and we mourn loss in our own ways. But we believe that God does not find pleasure in the death of any of His children (Ez. 18:23, 33:11). In times of suffering and loss, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who came down from heaven for our salvation, gives us hope, saying, “Do not be afraid; just have faith.” Christ desires not only to comfort us in our mourning but help us to be a comfort for each other in times of mourning and, in doing so, be blessed.