The healing power of God

 ‘Why all this commotion and crying? The child is not dead, but asleep.’ But they laughed at him. So he turned them all out and, taking with him the child’s father and mother and his own companions, he went into the place where the child lay. And taking the child by the hand he said to her, ‘Talitha, kum!’ which means, ‘little girl, I tell you to get up.’ The little girl got up at once and began to walk about, for she was twelve years old. At this they were overcome with astonishment, and he ordered them strictly not to let anyone know about it, and told them to give her something to eat.

Mark 5:39 - 43

My nephew was eight months old when his father, my brother, died in a tragic accident in 1991. He turned 25 in April. He has an elder brother and a sister, by all accounts wonderful young people and a mother who is utterly devoted to them. My mother and my many brothers and sisters have provided a familial network and my nephew has grown to be an upstanding and successful young man.

My sister-in-law’s tenacity as a mother is second to none. She has given everything she has to ensure that her children have what they need.

Death places huge, unexpected challenges before us. None of us can be shielded from death, nor can we escape it. In the history of humanity there have been many attempts to explain what lies beyond it. Some argue that death brings extinction of the self, others suggest a cycle of lives before reaching one’s highest potential or that there a continuation of the self after death. Still others proclaim a unity with creation that sees the self extinguished.

The Christian explanation is complex, for while it builds on the Hebrew experience it is strongly influenced by Greek philosophy. Christians link life after death to salvation: that is, because we are separated from God by sin, we need to reunited with him. God took human form, the person of Jesus, to save humanity by the way he lived, died and the rose from death. His resurrection became a foretaste of what awaited the faithful. The Christian scriptures advise that on the last day all will be judged and the righteous will be raised. Many modern Christian thinkers propose that all humanity will ultimately be saved. In the post-modern world, our loved ones ‘live forever’ in our hearts.

Mark (5:21 - 43) relates two interconnected stories, both well known. One is known as Jairus’ daughter, and the other, the Woman who touched Jesus’ cloak. Each story is a story about life, hope and the healing power of Jesus. In Jairus’ daughter a court official asks Jesus to heal his desperately sick daughter. Before Jesus can get there, the girl dies. Jesus tells the family that she is only asleep and bids her to wake. Now what held Jesus up was that on his way to Jairus’ home, was a woman who suffered from terrible haemorrhaging touched Jesus’ cloak in the hope of being healed of her disease. Jesus asks that whoever touched him declare themselves. The woman steps forward and Jesus recognises her faith.

The raising of Jairus’s daughter, like the story of Lazarus is a clear reminder of God’s power over death, of the promise of eternal life, of the offer of salvation for those who have faith. Both these stories speak to our deepest need for hope, that there must be, that there is such hope and salvation.

I dream that my nephew will come to know his great dad, not only through the stories passed to him by his family, but because ultimately, one day, he too will share with his father, eternal life.

Peter Douglas

HEAD OF SCHOOL SERVICES, NORTH

Reflection

Patient Trust by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

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