Commentary on the Gospel of
13th SUNDAY of the Ordinary Time
Stories of believing, stories of healing… Indeed we have a powerful text today. The narrative or narratives are beautifully told. We have a father, a leader of a religious institution, a daughter, a woman, the crowd, etc… The story begins with a conflict: Jairo’s daughter is agonizing. Then heightened by another conflict: woman suffering with hemorrhage. The development of the story is moving. And the resolutions of the conflicts are emotive.
At the heart of the narrative we find the deep human need for wholeness of life. We find the deep human struggle to preserve life and live it to the full. At the heart of the story, we find God active in these deep human longings.
Jairo and the sick woman consciously decided to make God part of their journey to achieve the answers to their deep longings. To Jairo, Jesus said: Do not fear, but believe. The woman believed. Jairo believed. To believe is to “see according to God’s seeing”. They saw God possible. They got answered.
We all do have a lot of deep longings. Do we want to make God part of the search for answers? Are we willing to “see according to God’s seeing? When we start to “see” the way God sees, our heart is transformed. And when we begin to see with a transformed heart, we see life in a different way.
