Sunday Sermon for June 30, 2024, the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
Readings: Wis 1:13-15, 2:23-24; 2 Cor 8:7, 9, 13-15; Mk 5:21-43
In the first reading today, we are presented with a truth that is of great importance to us: God did not make death. As we are told at the end of the reading, death came into the world by the envy of the devil. Another line we first need to consider says those who are in the company of the devil experience death.
We need to address this point first because we all know that we will die, so does this mean we are in the company of Satan? No, Jesus died and no one would suggest He was in league with the vile creature. It is true that we will all experience death, but clearly this teaching has a different meaning. We know that we are all called to eternal life in Heaven and, in order to get there, we must die in our temporal life on earth. Of course, we must also be in the state of sanctifying grace at the time we die. In other words, our hearts must be focused on loving and serving the Lord.
We will all die because of the temptation presented to our first parents who were duped into eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil rather than eat from the Tree of Life. Before God began His material creation, He first created the angels. Each angel was tested regarding their fidelity to and love for God. Depending on their free choice, the angels would enter into Heaven or enter into hell. This is the separation of light and darkness on the first day of creation.
So, before God began to create the earth, the enemy of our souls had already chosen against God. It is usually presented that he stated, “Non serviam,” I will not serve. Having chosen against God, the evil one also chose against life. Considering that he could not die, his choice was eternal death apart from God rather than eternal life with God.
Envy is the anger one feels at the good fortune of another. Having chosen against God, the devil was now angry that God would love humanity so much that He would become one of us. The vile creature was angry that we were created for eternal life and that we would be blessed to have the relationship with God that he had rejected. Therefore, in his hatred for humanity and, ultimately, in his hatred for God Who created humanity in His own image and likeness with the intention that we would live with Him forever, the despicable one hatched a plan to take down the human race before they made the decision that would be irreversible. If they chose God and ate from the Tree of Life, Satan would have no power over us.
Arriving shortly after the creation of our first parents, the true enemy of humanity twisted the truth God had spoken and convinced Adam and Eve that God did not truly love them because He was withholding the experiential knowledge of good and evil from them. Having fallen prey to his lies, Adam and Eve chose against God, just like Satan and the other fallen angels had done. This was not only his way of taking humanity down, but it was also the way he thought he could offend God the most. His envy, which developed into hatred, was directed primarily at God and secondarily at us.
The disgusting creature thought he had succeeded and, on one level, he had. However, as we see in the second reading, Jesus, though He was rich, became poor so we could become rich by His poverty. While St. Paul uses this statement in a different context, we can say Jesus became human so we could become divine. We were not restored to what Adam and Eve had in the Garden, but we were raised up as children of God to a level far beyond what they had at the beginning.
Jesus came to redeem us from our sins and to open for us the way to eternal life. In order for this to happen, by His own choice, He took our nature to Himself so He had the ability to die, something He could not do as God. He entered directly into the effect Satan’s “triumph” over humanity; He entered into death and destroyed it in the resurrection. This is foreshadowed in the raising up of the daughter of Jairus as we read in today’s Gospel.
We need not fear death, rather, like the woman suffering with hemorrhages in the Gospel, we need to approach Jesus with faith, reach out to Him, and allow Him to heal us. The choice is ours: death came into the world through the envy of the devil; Life came into the world through the love of God.
Fr. Altier’s column appears regularly in The Wanderer, a national Catholic weekly published in St. Paul, Minn. For information about subscribing to The Wanderer, please visit www.thewandererpress.com.
