Challenges of Faith
(13th Sunday in Ordinary Time)

The gospel reading for the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time presents two healing stories for our prayerful consideration: The healing of a woman afflicted with hemorrhages and the raising of the synagogue official’s daughter (Mark 5:21-43). These stories are important as they give us insightful tips for our spiritual life. I would like to mention a few of them.

1. Equal availability of God’s love…!

The Woman and Jairus, the main characters of the stories respectively, represent two groups of people: the marginalized and the centralized. The woman in the story personified the ‘voiceless, nameless and faceless’ people of the society. For example, she has no name, no title and no address. She is simply nobody. She is one among the crowd. On the other hand, Jairus has a name, title and address. He represents the elite and the privileged. Differences in their social standings, however, did not make any impact on the approach of Jesus. He was equally present to both. God is the God of all. Everybody is equally precious before His eyes. He has our names carved in the palm of his hands. He does not leave the lost one on the way thinking that “I have the 99 with me.” (Lk 15: 4-7). As St. Paul says: Jesus became poor to make every one rich before God (2Cor 8:7-15).

2. Faith, Precondition for God’s Grace…!

Jesus asked everyone who came seeking his help: “Do you believe that I can do this for you?” It is faith that does the magic. The faith of the woman was unparalleled. She said: If I touch his clothes, I shall be cured.” What a tremendous example of trusting faith. Like Abraham she believed with full confidence that ‘God will provide’. A genuine faith has the following two characteristics.

A). Expectant Faith: It is praying with the conviction that you have already received what you are praying for. This little story may help to illustrate this point. A whole area was very badly affected by a drought. People started praying for rain. The parish priest arranged a prayer service for this petition. The date was picked and was announced in the church. People from all over the region rushed to the church to pray. But after the Holy Mass, the parish priest, to everyone’s surprise, announced that the prayer service for rain has been canceled. “Why?” all the people shouted. “Nobody brought an umbrella”, the priest replied.

B) Action Oriented Faith: A genuine faith is always accompanying some action. For instance, the woman in the gospel story touched the edge of Jesus’ cloak. The synagogue official fell at the feet of Jesus. Zacchaeus climbed the tree. These were external expressions of their faith.

3. Crowd, a constant obstacle

When Jesus said, “This Child is not dead but sleep”, the crowd ridiculed him. “Why trouble the Teacher, she is dead.” Even Jairus’ own people responded in a similar fashion. Very often crowd is an obstacle to come closer to Jesus. Zacchaeus had to climb a tree to avoid the crowd. The four men who brought a paralyzed man to Jesus had to break open the roof to bring him closer to Jesus (Mk 2: 3-4). Jesus removed the doubting crowd before he healed the child. Mark says, “He put them all out.” (Mk 5:40). How do I overcome the pressures of a crowd? A disciple is someone who steps out of the crowd and declare Jesus publicly.