I will never forget the card my friend, Sr. Bea, gave me when I graduated from the seminary 21 years ago. The cover featured a monk busily writing on a scroll. Looking up, he says, “Your graduation should be listed among the sacred events in the Bible…” Inside the message continued, “along with the other miracles!”
I suspect most people think of miracles as being magical, unnatural acts. More than once I have seen people near death make a comeback after I had anointed them. As a child, my parents took me to Lourdes, hoping that my hearing could be restored. That didn’t happen, but countless crutches line the wall of the grotto there, testifying to the many miracles that have taken place.
Today’s gospel passage features two miracle stories, one sandwiched inside the other, intended to make a strong statement: Jesus has the power to heal. Last week, we saw that he had the power to calm the winds and the sea. The disciples had turned to him in their desperate need. This time, we find a synagogue official and a woman who had been ill for 12 years both turning to Jesus for a miracle.
For Jairus, the synagogue official, to seek Jesus out demonstrates that we would go to any extreme to save a person’s life, especially the life of someone whom we love. The child’s life was saved, but we never hear of her again so whatever happened to her? Like Lazarus, she was given a new lease on life, but at some appointed time, she did die.
Regardless of our gender, ethnicity, religious or sexual orientation, income, education, assets, or physical health, some day that too will be our fate. There is an appointed time in the heavens for us to die. When death happens, some people might try to reason that a person’s death is God’s will, but as the passage from Wisdom points out, “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.” If that line surprised you, go back and read the story of creation. When God made man and woman, he gave them a special participation in his own divine life. In his plan, God created us to be imperishable but, as Wisdom also points out, “by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who belong to his company experience it.”
Some people blame God when death claims the life of a loved one, so out of anger or grief, they turn away from God. I suspect they never realize that they have done just what they devil hoped they would do, distance themselves from God at a time when they need God the most.
Fr. John Powell shares the story of a former student who acted as an “atheist in residence” in his theology of faith class. Tommy constantly objected to, smirked at, or whined about the notion of an unconditionally loving God. At the end of the course as he turned in his exam, he cynically asked, “Do you think I will ever find God?” To shock him, Fr. Powell said, “No.” “Oh,” Tommy replied, “I thought that was the product you were pushing in this class.” Just as he was about to walk out of the room, Fr. Powell called out, “Tommy, I don’t think you will ever find him, but I’m absolutely certain God will find you!”
A few years later, Tommy came by to see Fr. Powell, who hardly recognized him for he was now terminally ill with lung cancer. His long hair had fallen out due to chemotherapy, but his eyes were bright and his voice firm as he shared his story, telling Fr. Powell that it was a matter of weeks.
“What is it like to be only 24 and dying?” “Well, it could be worse,” Tommy said. “Like what?” “Like being 50 and having no values or ideals, like thinking that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real ‘biggies’ in life.”
“What I really came to see you about is something you said to me on the last day of class. I thought about that a lot, even though my search for God was not all that intense at that time. But when the doctor told me the lump was malignant, I got serious about locating God. I really began banging bloody fists against the bronze doors of heaven but God did not seem to come out. I decided that I didn’t really care…about God, about an afterlife, or anything like that.
“I decided to spend what time I had left doing something more profitable. I remembered something else you had said: ‘the essential sadness is to go through life without loving. But it would be almost equally sad to go through life without ever telling those you loved that you loved them.’ To make a long story short, that is what Tommy did, beginning with his father, his mother, and his little brother. “I was sorry about one thing: that I had waited so long. Here I was, in the shadow of death and I was just beginning to open up to all the people I had actually been close to.
“Then one day, I turned around and God was there. He didn’t come to me when I pleaded with him. Apparently, God does things in his own way and at his own hour. But the important thing is that he was there. He found me. You were right. He found me even after I stopped looking for him.”
St. Therese of Lisieux tells us that we are saved by God’s love alone. Not when we make God a private possession, a problem solver or an instant consolation in time of need, but when we open ourselves to his love. That, my friends, is a miracle we can all experience. The choice is up to us.