Author: Christine Jordan

Dear Friends,

Not long ago I was at a conference which was held at the St. John Center in Plymouth.  The St. John Center is an old converted seminary, surrounded by a golf course, a beautiful place.  And at one of the presentations a psychologist by the name of Andrew told us his conversion story.  And I’m such a geek that I took notes about his conversion.  Andrew began his adult life by pursuing the gay lifestyle to the utmost.  He was a great proponent and defender of the life-style.  After nearly a decade of doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted and with whomever he wanted he began to feel that something was missing.  This so called freedom, he was living felt empty and meaningless, it felt like a dead-end.  One night after getting drunk he wandered the streets not really knowing where he was going and he ended up passing by a tent revival of some evangelical Christian group.  They were loud, singing and praying at the top of their lungs.  And they were joyful.  And Andrew thought to himself, “What have I got to lose?”  He went into the tent, and in that tent, he found a community, and he found love, he found real love, and most importantly he found Jesus.

That was Andrew’s turning point.  He joined that community, he left behind his old life.  And he pursued Christianity with gusto.  He prayed, he went church services, he researched and he studied.  He studied everything he could find.  Even studying the earliest Christian writings.  And in those writings he read of the Eucharist.  He read of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist.  And he was intrigued.   Now he knew that Catholics believed in the Eucharist but he wasn’t ever going to become a Catholic, they’re crazy, all those outdated beliefs.  And so he did the next best thing, he said, he joined an Episcopal church.  But after a few months that just didn’t seem right either he said.    And so one Sunday he did what he thought he’d never do, we went into the Catholic Church down the street from his home.  And in that church he saw a tabernacle for the very first time.

At this church during communion time the priest left the tabernacle door open.  And this caught Andrew’s attention. Week after week that open door beckoned him. He began seeing it as an open doorway to Heaven, Jesus was there, he couldn’t take his eyes off of the open door and the Inhabitant of that gold box.  He was beginning to ache to receive the Eucharist.  He really believed that this was Jesus in that tabernacle.  And so he reasoned with himself, “If I can believe that the Church gives me Jesus in the Eucharist, then why can’t I believe that the Church gives me Jesus, the way of life.”  In other words if I can believe the Church when she tells me Jesus is really present in the Eucharist, then I can believe everything else she teaches.  He eventually did, and through the RCIA process, and a big dose of grace, he came to believe everything.  And at the next Easter vigil he made his first Holy Communion.  And as he walked back to his pew, after receiving for the very first time, he said he felt a fullness, and a satisfaction, and a sweetness like he had never felt before.  He was home.

The Eucharist is the center of our lives as Catholics.  Objectively speaking, there is nothing that we can ever do in this life that can compare with what happens when we receive communion.   There is an intimate union of hearts.  By the power of the Holy Spirit, ordinary bread and wine are changed into the Body, Blood, soul, and Divinity of Jesus.  So when we receive the Eucharist, we feed on God, we feed on His divine life, his power, and his love.  That’s why we don’t chew gum when we come to communion, and why we wear nice clothes when we come to Mass, because nothing can compare with this.  And yet, often times, for many of us, we don’t leave full and satisfied and filled with a sweetness.

How can we change this?  Let me make three suggestions.  Let me suggest we all make an effort to do three things and see if Mass changes any for us.  First, let’s try to get here a few minutes early.  And when we get here, let’s take some time to pray, to ask God to help us understand the Mass; let’s ask Him to help us to encounter Him; lets ask Him to reveal Himself to us with all of our cares and  concerns.  Second, don’t leave early.  What could possibly be more important than saying “Thank You” to the One who made you, loves you, and has just given Himself to you to eat?  So take a minute or two to say thanks, and to reflect on what has happened and who has just entered into you.  And we’ll try to be quiet here in the church.  Third, make an effort to read the Gospel before coming to Mass.  Come prepared, and come both hungry and expecting to get fed.

God has so much more for us than what many of us are settling for.  As you approach the tabernacle remember, he’s been waiting for you for twenty centuries.  He always does His part.  Let’s try in the weeks ahead to work more on our part.

Pax et Bonum,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

A theologian once explained the assumption of Mary into Heaven by using the concept of love.  He said that love is like fire, it burns upward.  And since love is basically desire.  Love seeks to become more and more united with the object that is loved.  Now we all understand the law of gravity.  Gravity is what keeps us firmly planted on the ground.  But there’s also a law of spiritual gravity and that Law of Spiritual gravity is the pull on our heart by God and the closer we get to God the greater the pull.  This divine pull on our hearts is always present, and it’s only our refusal and the weakness of our bodies due to sin that keeps us earth-bound.

Now Mary knows how to love.  She’s free of original sin and she never committed sin.  Her body didn’t wage war with her soul; there was no opposition between body and soul.  Her heart and soul were totally directed to God and His will.  Now given the intense love of our Lord for His Blessed Mother and the intense love of Mary for our Lord, the saints will say that this love is at such an advanced stage it would be great enough to “pull the body with it.”   Mary’s love for God was so great that her body followed her soul.  Do I understand all the mechanics of the Assumption, no?  But I do believe it.  And I think that one reason the Church gives us the Dogma of the Assumption of Mary is to proclaim loudly to the world the sacredness of the human body.  Each human body is made to be a temple of the Holy Spirit more beautiful, in God’s eyes, than the grandest cathedral.  Fr. Delbee would say that each of us is a marvel of creation made in the image of God, a masterpiece of his love.  And even though we were wounded and disfigured by sin, we have been remade by the Redeemer, more beautiful than before.

By proclaiming the dogma of the Assumption the Church shows us what God thinks of human flesh; human flesh is worthy of eternal glory and of union with the Most Blessed Trinity.  Not only does Jesus bring his human body to heaven, but he wills that his Mother Mary should be with him as well, in both her body and soul.  The two of them, Jesus and Mary together, await all of us when we will one day join them too, body and soul.

Our world today is in need of a constant reminder of the Assumption.  The world of 2018 tells us that human flesh has seemingly no value, no sacredness.  Our world profits in human trafficking, it glamorizes pornography, relations outside of marriage, it contracepts, experiments on human embryos, kills the unborn and then harvests their organs. We are in need of the constant reminder of the Virgin Mary’s Assumption.  We are in need of a reminder of the value and sacredness of the human body.  And that’s our job to be the reminder to the world of the Assumption and we do this by monitoring the language we use, the music we listen to, the shows we watch, the businesses we support, the websites we visit, the magazines we buy, and ultimately the politicians we elect.  In all we do we preach the assumption using words because what happened to Mary will one day happen to each of us.  Although we wait, we believe in the glorification of our body and soul together in heaven.  First Christ, then Mary, then the entire church, or as St. Paul says; “all those who belong to him.”  And this gives us great hope.

Pax et Bonum,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

From the beginning of a letter attributed to Barnabas

Hope of life is the beginning and end of our faith

Greetings, sons and daughters. In the name of the Lord who loves us, peace be to you.

Because the Lord has granted you an abundance of blessings, I rejoice immeasurably in your blessed and glorious company.

You have received abundantly that indwelling grace which is the Spirit’s gift, and for this reason I hope in my own salvation and I give thanks all the more when I see the bountiful fullness of the Lord’s Spirit pouring over you. I have longed so much for you that when I saw you I was overwhelmed.

I am now convinced and fully aware that I have learned much by speaking with you, for the Lord accompanied me on the road to righteousness, and so I am driven in all ways to love you more than my own life. For surely there is a great store of faith and charity within you because of your hope for life in Christ. Therefore, I have been thinking that if my concern for you inspires me to pass on to you a portion of what I have received, then I will be rewarded for ministering to souls such as yours. Consequently, I am writing you, that you may have perfect knowledge along with your faith.

The Lord has given us these three basic doctrines: hope for eternal life, the beginning and end of our faith; justice, the beginning and end of righteousness; and love, which bears cheerful and joyous witness to the works of righteousness. Now the Lord has made the past and present known to us through his prophets, and he has given us the ability to taste the fruits of the future beforehand. Thus, when we see prophecies fulfilled in their appointed order, we ought to grow more fully and deeply in awe of him. Let me suggest a few things – not as a teacher, but as one of you – which should bring you joy in the present situation.

When evil days are upon us and the worker of malice gains power, we must attend to our own souls and seek to know the ways of the Lord. In those times reverential fear and perseverance will sustain our faith, and we will find need of forbearance and self-restraint as well. Provided that we hold fast to these virtues and look to the Lord, then wisdom, understanding, knowledge and insight will make joyous company with them.

Truly, the Lord has revealed to us through the prophets that he has no need of sacrifice, burnt offerings or oblations. He says in one place: Your endless sacrifices, what are they to me? says the Lord. I have had my fill of holocausts; I do not want the fat of your lambs, nor the blood of your bulls and goats, nor your presence in my sight. Indeed, who has made these demands of you? No more will you trample my courts. Your sacrifices of fine flour are in vain; your incense is loathsome to me; I cannot bear your feasts of the new moon, nor your Sabbaths.

Dear Friends,

Being a Christian means believing in miracles.  You can’t be a Christian without believing in miracles.  Christianity absolutely demands a belief in miracles.  Because all of Christianity’s fundamental claims and doctrines are miracles, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, Salvation, and Divine Inspiration.  Miracles always belong to the realm of the divine, because God and miracles always go together.  Miracles are always wonders of the supernatural, they’re not earthly natural wonders.  There is no scientific explanation.

As an example, babies are sometimes called miraculous and while they’re beautiful, and wonderful, and great, and cute, they’re not miracles.  Instead, they’re wonders of nature, natural wonders that are completely scientifically explainable.  The Virgin Birth on the other hand, is a supernatural wonder, a heavenly wonder, a true miracle that science can’t explain.

Laws of Science are made from observations of how nature works here on earth.  Supernatural events or miracles don’t contradict natural events, because science only tells us how things operate in nature, science can’t tell us how things operate in Heaven.  The scientific method, developed at Catholic Universities in the middle ages, explains this world.  The scientific method   better helps us to understand and appreciate God’s creation.  And that is a very good thing, however, science cannot explain Heaven, science cannot explain Heaven’s inhabitants, and science cannot explain Heaven’s miracles.  And would we even want to worship a god who could be examined in such a finite way, say, under an electron microscope.  God is much more magnificent and infinite to be discovered in such a limited way.  To discover God with science would reduce him to something earthly and worldly.  But God is not of this world, He was, even before this world even existed.  He is transcendent.

Modern science has explained away some of the things that ancient people thought were miraculous, like thunder and lightning for example, but science has not explained away any of the miracles in the New Testament and it never will.  Science has not made the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, or the feeding of the five thousand one bit less miraculous.

The New Testament gives us an account of the many miracles performed by Jesus.  He instantaneously cures lepers, the blind, the mute, and the deaf.  He also cures paralytics and raises the dead to life.  He even cures those with a hardness of heart.  The miracles worked by Jesus invited those around him to a belief in Him and all that He taught.

The miracle we heard about today, the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, foretells of the unique bread of the Eucharist.  As we heard Jesus took the bread, gave thanks, and distributed the bread.  And they all ate and were satisfied.  Jesus fed that multitude with earthly bread.  Today, however, he feeds us with his body and blood hidden in the form of bread and wine.  The visible miracles of the New Testament were short lived and they all took place within a small area of the Middle East.  The invisible miracle of the Eucharist today, however, has been with us continually for two millennia and has taken place throughout the entire world and will endure until the end of time.

The Vatican has a traveling exhibit on Eucharistic Miracles.  I once viewed this exhibit and there are hundreds of miracles described.  There are miracles from every century of our Church’s history.  These miracles have helped to strengthen the faith of many throughout the centuries.  They reinforce what was taught to us by Jesus.  During his preaching Jesus pre-announced the Eucharist (as in today’s Gospel) and later, he gave it to us when celebrating the Last Supper with his apostles.  Our faith in the Eucharist is based on what Jesus taught and the Eucharistic miracles strengthen this faith.

One of the miracles in that display involves a man by the name of Andre Frossard.  He was a Frenchman who died in 1995.  He was born and raised in an atheistic household.  Issues of faith and religion never crossed his mind.  He once said, “Religion isn’t even a subject worthy of human thought.”  It was that unimportant to him.  By the age of twenty Andre was a content and happy man who greatly enjoyed his free-love lifestyle.

The incident of his conversion begins with him in a car going on an errand with a friend.  On the way to their destination the friend needed to stop at a church to see someone.  Andre waited in the car.  He soon got bored, however, and decides to enter the church to see what had happened to his friend.  At this point in his life Andre has no interest in faith. And isn’t even seeking God.  He’s only in the church to find his friend.  Within five minutes, however, his whole life is changed.  Standing in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, of which he is totally unaware, in his own words he says, “An indescribable force shatters in an instant the absurd being that I was, and brought to birth the amazed child that I had never been.”  He left the church a converted man and was quickly received into the Catholic Church.  Andre Frossard went on to become a famous newspaper columnist and bestselling author.  He even wrote two books about St. John Paul II who had become one of his closest friends.  Through this miraculous and instantaneous conversion who knows how many souls were positively influenced by the Catholic witness of Andre Frossard.  God used Andre to reach many people.

On this day when we hear about the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes, a foreshadowing of the Eucharist I want to end with a quote from Frossard writing about his own miraculous conversion:

“…I have had the good fortune to be a forgiven child who wakes up to discover that everything is a gift…God existed and was present…one thing only surprised me:  The Eucharist – not that it seemed incredible, but it amazed me that Divine Charity would have come upon this silent way to communicate Himself, and above all that He would choose to become bread, which is the staple of the poor, and the food preferred by children…O Divine Love, eternity will be too short to speak of You.” 

Pax et Bonum,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

From the treatise On the Mysteries by Saint Ambrose, bishop

To the newly baptized on the Eucharist

Fresh from the waters and resplendent in these garments, God’s holy people hasten to the altar of Christ, saying: I will go in to the altar of God, to God who gives joy to my youth. They have sloughed off the old skin of error, their youth renewed like an eagle’s, and they make haste to approach that heavenly banquet. They come and, seeing the sacred altar prepared, cry out: You have prepared a table in my sight. David puts these words into their mouths: The Lord is my shepherd and nothing will be lacking to me. He has set me down there in a place of pasture. He has brought me beside refreshing water. Further on, we read: For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I shall not be afraid of evils, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff have given me comfort. You have prepared in my sight a table against those who afflict me. You have made my head rich in oil, and your cup, which exhilarates how excellent it is.

It is wonderful that God rained manna on our fathers and they were fed with daily food from heaven. And so it is written: Man ate the bread of angels. Yet those who ate that bread all died in the desert. But the food that you receive, that living bread which came down from heaven, supplies the very substance of eternal life, and whoever will eat it will never die, for it is the body of Christ.

Consider now which is the more excellent: the bread of angels or the flesh of Christ, which is indeed the body that gives life. The first was manna from heaven; the second is above the heavens. One was of heaven, the other is of the Lord of the heavens; one subject to corruption if it was kept till the morrow, the other free from all corruption, for if anyone tastes of it with reverence he will be incapable of corruption. For our fathers, water flowed from the rock; for you, blood flows from Christ. Water satisfied their thirst for a time; blood cleanses you forever. The Jew drinks and still thirsts, but when you drink you will be incapable of thirst. What happened in symbol is now fulfilled in reality.

If what you marvel at is a shadow, how great is the reality whose very shadow you marvel at. Listen to this, which shows that what happened in the time of our fathers was but a shadow. They drank, it is written, from the rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. All this took place as a symbol for us. You know now what is more excellent: light is preferable to its shadow, reality to its symbol, the body of the Giver to the manna he gave from heaven.

Beloved, see what a marvelous thing love is; its perfection is beyond our expression. Who can truly love save those to whom God grants it? We ought to beg and beseech him in his mercy that our love may be genuine, unmarred by any too human inclination. From Adam down to the present time all generations have passed away; but those who were perfected in love by God’s grace have a place among the saints who will be revealed when the kingdom of Christ comes to us. As it is written: Enter your chambers for a little while, until my wrath and anger pass away; and I shall remember a good day and raise you from your graves. We are blessed, beloved, if we fulfill the commands of the Lord in harmonious, loving union, so that through love our sins may be forgiven. For it is written: Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputes not iniquity, and in whose mouth there is no deceit. This is the blessing that has been given to those who have been chosen by God through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever. Amen.

We should pray then that we may be granted forgiveness for our sins and for whatever we may have done when led astray by our adversary’s servants. And for those who were the leaders of the schism and the sedition, they too should look to the common hope. For those who live in pious fear and in love are willing to endure torment rather than have their neighbor suffer; and they more willingly suffer their own condemnation than the loss of that harmony that has been so nobly and righteously handed down to us. For it is better for a man to confess his sins than to harden his heart.

Who then among you is generous, who is compassionate, who is filled with love? He should speak out as follows: If I have been the cause of sedition, conflict and schisms, then I shall depart; I shall go away wherever you wish, and I shall do what the community wants, if only the flock of Christ live in peace with the presbyters who are set over them. Whoever acts thus would win great glory for himself in Christ, and he would be received everywhere, for the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. Thus have they acted in the past and will continue to act in the future who live without regret as citizens in the city of God.

Dear Friends,

Matthew Talbot was an Irishman born in Dublin in 1856.  His parents were very poor and he was the second of twelve children.  Most everyone in his family was an alcoholic.  At the age of twelve, as was the custom, Matthew left school and began working to support his family.  His first job was in a store that sold wine.  It wasn’t long before he was sampling the wine in the backroom.  At age sixteen he got a job with the Port and Dock Board where he worked among the whiskey stores.  While still a teenager Matthew Talbot was a confirmed alcoholic.

When drunk he became very hot tempered, he got into fights, and swore heavily.  He spent most if not all of his paycheck at the bars and pubs of Dublin.   And if he didn’t have enough money he would buy drinks on credit or sell his possessions, selling anything that might get enough money to buy just even one drink.  And if desperate enough he would even steal.  He refused to listen to his mother’s plea to stop drinking.

After drinking for sixteen years Matthew finally lost his own self-respect.  One day when he was totally broke, he loitered on a street corner waiting for his friends who were leaving work.  It was payday and he was hoping that one of them would buy him a drink.  None of them did.  No one offered him a drink.  Dejected he went home and publicly resolved to his mother, “I’m going to take the pledge, and I’m not going to drink anymore.”   His mother smiled and told him, “Go, in God’s name, but don’t take the pledge unless you’re going to keep it.”   As Matthew was leaving the house she called out, “May God give you strength to keep it.”

After leaving the house Matthew went straight to confession and took the pledge not to drink for three months.  The next day he went to Mass and received Holy Communion something he hadn’t done in years.  From that moment on in 1884 when he was 28 years old, Matthew became a new man.  After he had successfully fulfilled his pledge for three months, he made a life long pledge never to drink again.

And he never did.  But it wasn’t easy he told his sister, “Never look down on a man, who cannot give up the drink, it’s easier to get out of Hell.”  But with the grace of God he maintained his sobriety for the next forty years of his life.  He found strength in prayer, daily Mass, the Eucharist, Confession and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  He studied his faith and read the great spiritual masters.  And he got a new job away from the whiskey.   With this new job in a lumber yard he paid all of his debts and became very generous with the poor.  The converted Matthew never swore, was good humored and friendly to everyone.

At the age of 69 as Matthew was walking to Church he collapsed and died.  In his coat they found a note that read, “Three things I cannot escape:  the eye of God, the voice of conscience, the stroke of death.  In company, guard your tongue.  In your family, guard your temper.  When alone guard your thoughts.”  After his death Matthew was recognized as one possessing heroic virtue, something with God’s grace that he had grown into.  At this time Matthew Talbot has been declared venerable by the Church.  He’s on his way to canonization.

Now suppose we were to pose a question to someone who knew Matthew during his dark days and we were to ask, “Do you see Matthew as a child of God?” and “Do you see Christ in him?”  They probably would have a hard time saying yes.  But as Christians we always try to see the face of Christ in others, even if we only see a dead Christ within the tomb.  I once had a discussion about this with my cousin Bill and my Mom.  Mom was a nurse and she always tried to see the face of Christ in her patients.  And it was easier with some patients than others, she told us about one patient she always had difficulty in giving him his meds.  He just wouldn’t take them even in applesauce.  So Mom kept reminding herself, “face of Christ, face of Christ, face of Christ.”  But my cousin Bill asked her, “Do you think that patient saw the face of Christ in you?”  Mom had to answer no, “He probably saw someone who was impatient and very irked.”  It works both ways.  We look for Christ in others as they look for Christ in us.

In today’s Gospel Jesus comes home and at first he is met with curiosity and amazement but then the criticisms begin.  They didn’t see the divine in Jesus, they didn’t see Christ the Lord in Jesus, they thought they had him all figured out, they asked themselves, “Who does he think he is?”  “He’s just one of us.”  “How come he thinks he can preach to us, the people of his hometown?”  It was only with time that they gradually realized who Jesus was.  He was the Lord. He was divine.

I want to end with two observations, the first about Jesus and the second about us.  First Jesus, how were his neighbors in the village and his relatives to know that the child who grew up in their town bore within him such a secret, that he was God’s Son made man?  His everyday life in Nazareth was too unassuming.  It is a little bit like that today.  God’s presence in our midst is often hidden and easy to overlook.  Think of the Eucharist, think of your neighbor.  Today, too, Christ is with us but He’s with us in, “everyday clothes,” and only the eyes of faith perceive him, perceive Him in the everyday ordinary clothes of bread and wine and in the ordinary clothes of our neighbor.

The second observation is about us.  How often are we mistaken about those people closest to us?  Every one of us has his or her unsuspected qualities.  It’s often an outsider who is more aware of these qualities than our own family.  How great it is when we discover the treasure within those people closest to us the treasure within those people sitting next to us.

Peace and all good,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

Faith, we see this in the lives of the saints, we see men and women who exercised their faith until it filled them with a truly supernatural hope and courage.  St. Jan Sarkander is a good example.  After his young wife died childless, he was ordained a parish priest and he served valiantly in the eastern Czech Republic during the early 1600s.  Those were very hard times, especially because of the Thirty Years War, a horrible conflict between Protestants and Catholics that ripped Europe apart.  When the war reached the area around his parish, Fr. Jan escaped into Poland to avoid being captured by the occupying Protestant forces.

But he couldn’t stay away for long because he worried about his people.  After five months he returned to the war-torn Czech Republic to be with his parish.  Soon after his return, a Polish army of Catholic soldiers moved in, and a bloody battle seemed unavoidable.  Jan desperately wanted to avoid any killing and bloodshed.  So trusting in Christ, he marched into the Polish army’s camp carrying a monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament.    This was both his shield and a chastisement to the Polish forces.  Good Catholic guilt.

Fr. Jan won a hearing with the Polish field commander, and no battles were fought in that region.  The Protestant Baron leading the rebellion, however, later arrested the future saint as a spy, mistakenly blaming him for the arrival of the Polish troops.  Jan was imprisoned.  They wanted him to renounce his Catholic faith and to break the seal of confession to give them secret information about the opposing leaders.  He was tortured, stretched on a rack, beaten, and set on fire, but he stayed faithful to his priestly duties until death.  Challenging an army with no weapon but the Eucharist and protecting the seal of confession even under weeks of torture, this is the courage that a mature faith gives us by casting out our self-centered fears.

Now in our Gospel we heard two examples, two stories of this great and mature faith.  Each story though separate parallels the other.  Both the woman and the girl are dead, one physically and the other spiritually.  At that time according to Mosaic Law a hemorrhaging woman was considered ritually impure.  And if you go to the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament you’ll find all the prescriptions, and laws, and directives that guided the life of the faithful Jew.  Leviticus lists what they could touch or not touch, what they could eat and not eat.  Now for this woman considered unclean anything she touched or sat upon also became unclean.  Any person she touched would become unclean.  She would’ve been shunned by her husband and all the people of her community.  She wasn’t even allowed to enter the Temple to worship.  So for twelve years she had been kept at a distance, kept at a distance from her family and her friends and from God.  She was a pariah who couldn’t participate in all the ordinary things of life.  I’m sure that on top of the physical suffering there was a tremendous amount of psychological and spiritual suffering.

Now this woman has been to many doctors and it’s only gotten worse.  But she’s heard of this healer named Jesus, the messiah maybe, and in her deep faith she reasons, “If I but touch his clothes, I shall be healed.”   And so she touches Jesus, and in doing so, according to Mosaic Law she’s made him unclean.   And the crowd was very uncomfortable with this woman touching Jesus and when found out she approaches Jesus in fear and trembling.  She has done something very terrible; she’s broken the Law of Moses.  But a miracle has happened, Jesus isn’t made unclean the exact opposite has happened the woman is cured and made clean.  She is restored to life in her family and in the community.  She can worship again in the temple.

Now in the other story we hear of Jairus the synagogue official.  And he too exhibits a deep faith in Jesus’ ability to heal.  He would have been a prominent layman whose duties would have included oversight of synagogue activities and finances.  This man’s humble posture before Jesus, he fell at his feet, is remarkable in view of the fact that Jesus’ last visit to the synagogue ended with a plot to kill him.  Now Jesus, when he gets to the house of Jairus, does something forbidden by Mosaic Law he touches the dead girl’s hand.  This would have made him impure.  Only the immediate family could touch the dead body.  But his healing touch raises her to life.

Through these two miracles Jesus puts an end to the ritual code found in Leviticus.  He was not made unclean.  Contact with Jesus made the unclean clean.  The New Israel, the Church, is brought about through contact with him.  His touch brings life.  As we heard in the first reading, “God did not make death.”  It was the exact opposite he created us to have life, and to have life to the fullest with him.  When we kneel before the priest in the confessional and open our hearts to God’s mercy, we are like Jairus kneeling before Christ in Galilee.  When we touch the body and blood of Jesus under the appearance of bread and wind in the Eucharist, we are like the woman with hemorrhages.  In both instances Christ’s divine life flows into our wounded lives.  The same Jesus of the Gospels is still at work through the sacraments, still present and active in history, still healing, giving life, and strengthening those with faith.  And so we approach the sacraments with humble faith.

Let me end with a couple of questions. When we approach our Lord in the sacraments, do we approach him like one in the crowd we heard about in the Gospel who half-consciously jostles up against him preoccupied by many other thoughts?  Or, do we approach Him in the way of the afflicted woman or Jairus?   Because they are models for us in the way to approach Jesus.  While crowds of people were bumping into him as he walked along, the woman with hemorrhages and Jairus purposefully set out to meet him and to touch him.  They trusted his power.  They trusted his touch.  Their deep faith brought them into contact with Jesus and as a result they experienced dramatic healing.

God did not make death so with every sacrament we receive we receive divine life.  Let us ask always for healing let us ask always for life.  Where do I need healing?  Where do I need life?  How do I need healing?  How do I need life?  St. Jan Sarkander went to his death defending the great truth of the Eucharist and reconciliation, may we be like the kneeling Jairus and the afflicted woman approaching Jesus with faith trusting in his power and in his touch.

Peace and all good,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley