A Commentary and Reflection on the Readings for the 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Year B. The Liturgical Sense of the Scriptures Podcast, by Catholic Author and Theologian David L. Gray. READINGS: Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24, 2 Corinthians 8:7, 9, 13-15, Mark 5:21-24, 35b-43.
The Liturgy of the Mass is Processing Us to Poverty
The revelation of our Catholic faith that our God is pro-life. In other words, He is the God of not death but life and champions the wholeness of human life. The sacred Scriptures teach us that Christ Jesus calls Himself “the life,”[1] promises that He has come that we may have life and life abundant,[2] proclaims that our Eternal Father, who is the God of the living and not the dead,[3] sent Him into this world so that whosoever believes in Him will have eternal life.[4]
In today’s Gospel Reading for the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year B from Mark 5:21-24, 35b-43, we hear about just two instances where our Lord reached into death and brought out life; the first was the twelve-year-old daughter of Jarius, “one of the synagogue officials,” who had died but was brought back to life when Jesus took the corpse by the hand and said, “Little girl, I say to you, arise!” Then there was the woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years and whose condition, which can be fatal, had “only grown worse.” While on His way to reach Jarius’ home, the hemorrhaging woman, in a desperate act of faith, came up behind Jesus and touched His cloak, believing that “If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured.” The text then reads, “Immediately her flow of blood dried up. She felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.”
For over three years, Christ Jesus engaged in a magnanimous and visible manifestation of the living Word of God among us through healing, preaching, and teaching. This love for us and love of the will of His Father ultimately lead to sacrificing His life so that we might have happiness in Him and share in His life eternal with the Father. So, on the third day, Jesus rose from the dead, thereby proving that crucifixion, the Roman Empire’s instrument of capital punishment for non-Roman citizens, has no power over the life that He has come to give us.
That God created us for life in Him is not only a testimony of the New Covenant, but it was since the beginning of creation that God made man a living soul by breathing the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils. This is also the testimony of today’s First Reading from the book of Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24 where we hear that “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living. For he fashioned all things that they might have being and the creatures of the world are wholesome . . . For God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him. But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who belong to his company experience it.” Therefore, the original nature of man is like God. In other words, God created man for life and for him to be whole so that he might share in the life of God. However, death only entered the world because man chose sin; that is, he chose to be less than whole and by choosing something less than God, which was sin over virtue, reverence, and obedience.
On the contrary, the wounded human heart is inclined to choose something less than God because it finds pleasure in selfish behaviors. Indeed, this is the crux of the wounded human condition and why we must return to the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. In varying degrees, we all desire to imitate the Blessed Mother Mary and say ‘yes’ to God. However, at times, the only god we choose to serve is the one we look at in the mirror, whose name is disobedience. This, most certainly, is a miserable condition, especially for those who have not entirely given into what the Apostle Paul calls the ‘vanity in reasoning, the darkening of the senses, and an undiscerning mind.’[5]
Nevertheless, for those who still believe in the capacity they were created to have for God, the crux of the problem has a relatively simple solution according to Saint Paul in today’s Second Reading from 2 Corinthians 8:7, 9, 13-15, in writing, “For you know the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, for your sake he became poor so that by his poverty you might become rich.” This teaching is also applied to us directly from Christ Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount, saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”[6] The applicable meaning of this is that we must believe in the truth that we cannot afford sin because we cannot pay its debt. The only person who could pay the price for our sins is Christ Jesus, and that debt was paid, not with His riches, but in the poverty of sacrificing His life. Who are we to take back up that debt again? We cannot pay for it. A poor person cannot afford anything, let alone the price of sin against God. If a poor person is given bread daily, they eat it; if given wine, they drink it; if invited to a wedding feast, they go. However, to take on a debt they could never pay would only render them into a debtor’s prison that we call Hell.
The procession to poverty is how every procession of the Divine Symphony of the Catholic Mass leads us because every procession leads us to the altar of His sacrifice, where the poor person is given bread that has become His Flesh and wine that has become His Blood. His Body and His love are all we get in this life, because we cannot afford anything related to eternal life. We are poor! What can we afford that belongs to God? We can neither pay for our eternal debt nor our eternal salvation. We are poor! Everything we have good in this life has come from the author of goodness and was given to us not to own as personal property but as a gift to be thankful for. We are poor! We are mere beggars who rely on the riches of our King, who promises to provide us with everything we need to be who He has created us to be. The Apostle Paul wrote about this promise to the Church at Phillipi: “My God will fully supply whatever you need, in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”[7] Therefore, let us trust in that promise and the liturgical procession to poverty.
This is just one way how the readings at Mass this Sunday connect to the liturgy and how the liturgy is forming us how to live our lives in the world. Be in the world what you have received through the liturgy.
[1] John 11:25, 14:6.
[2] Cf. John 10:10.
[3] Cf. Matthew 22:32; Mark 12:27; Luke 20:38.
[4] Cf. John 3:16.
[5] Romans 1:21, 28.
[6] Matthew 5:3.
[7] Philippians 4:19.
