13th Sunday of Ordinary Time 2024 - Death, Life, and Interruptions

 Interruptions. Most of us hate to be interrupted. We’re in the middle of preparing a meal, and the phone rings; in the middle of our prayer time, and there’s a knock on the door; making good time in our commute to work or to a vacation locale, and there’s a traffic jam; we finally have time to relax after a long day or a long week, and there’s an emergency we need to attend to. Interruptions. They are so frequently inconvenient, it’s almost comical. 

Did you notice that our Lord was interrupted in our Gospel this weekend. The Lord is on his way to heal the sick daughter of Jairus when he is interrupted by the woman with a hemorrhage. This is a common feature in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is constantly being interrupted. But one might say that the intertwining of the two miracle stories, one story of Jesus being interrupted to perform a miracle, teaches us that even interruptions are part of God’s wise providential plan for our lives, even when we are interrupted by good and holy things like prayer or caregiving.

The interruption by the woman with the hemorrhage delayed the Lord’s trip to heal Jairus’ daughter. And because of the interruption it appears Jesus arrives too late. But there is never a “too late” for God. What was originally going to be a miracle of healing became something much more—a miracle of raising the dead. The interruption became an opportunity for God’s glory to shine even brighter. 

So too with the interruptions we face. In response to those forces that are beyond our control, we need to remind ourselves of the one that IS in control, and to seek God’s will in the present, without worrying so much about the future. Interruptions of our plans are part of God’s providential plan. So, we should teach ourselves to say the essential prayer, “thy will be done” to those many little interruptions we so naturally resent and even to the big ones.

For, God does not ask us to succeed in finishing and accomplishing our enterprises, only to do our duty of being faithful to him at each present moment. Our plans and God’s plan coincide only sometimes—perhaps, rarely. As one comedian put it, if you want to give God a good laugh, tell him your plans.

Our job is to give ourselves over more and more to God’s plan—to surrender in times when we face even tragedy and death. Death, we heard about death in our first reading today. Scripture often tackles the reality of death. 

But if the resurrection of Jesus teaches us anything, it’s that God is in control and can bring about a greater good even from something as terrible as death. 

And death is a reality that each of us grapples with. Our lives are measured by time, in the course of which we change, grow old and, as with all living beings on earth, we die. Mindfulness of the limited time we have on earth lends urgency to our lives. Remembering our mortality helps us realize that we have only a limited time in which to bring our lives to fulfillment. We are to make use of the time we have been given in this earthly life to work out our salvation and to seek the perfection for which we were made.

But where did death come from? Death is a consequence of sin. As we heard in our first reading today, “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living…For God formed man to be imperishable” We would have been immune from death had Adam and Eve not sinned. God, in whose image we are made is the God and author of life. He is the Creator. He made us for living communion with Himself. Human death entered the world by our choosing death. God wanted life for us. God is pro-life. But we chose death, introducing death into creation. But, with the time we have on earth, we must choose life. For ourselves and others. 

You might say, “well if God didn’t make death” why do plants and animals die. Even nonliving things come to an end: rocks become sand after millennia of wind and waves. Even after eons stars and galaxies die. 

But human death is different than all other death. God did not make it. He made man to live forever. Death is a consequence of the fall of man, not a consequence of the creation of God. 

The first reading said, it was by the envy of the devil, that death entered the world. It was the plan of the devil to obscure the plans of God for us. And we bought into it. The sinful misuse of our God-given ability of choice brought death into the world to the delight of the devil. 

But again, God is greater than our plans and even the plans of the devil. For through Jesus Christ, death is transformed. Jesus, the Son of God, himself suffered the death that is part of the human condition. Yet, despite his anguish as he faced death, he accepted it in an act of complete and free submission to his Father's will. By his death he has conquered death, and so opened the possibility of salvation to all men.

Death is the end of man's earthly pilgrimage, of the time of grace and mercy which God offers us so as to work out our eternal destiny. Will we pursue eternal life through Christ or eternal death by turning away from Him. But again, through Jesus death is transformed. For those who die in friendship with Christ, death is a simple closing of our physical eyes, that the eyes of our soul can come to behold the face of God in eternity. 

 When we have made our peace with God, and have faith that the love of Christ is greater than death, it becomes easier to remain peaceful and trusting in God in the face of those smaller interruptions. The traffic jams, the inconvenient social calls become opportunities to turn to God, to trust God in those circumstances which are beyond our control, to deepen our conviction to pursue God over our own selfish aims, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.