The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (2024)
When they arrived at the house of the synagogue official,
he caught sight of a commotion,
people weeping and wailing loudly.
So he went in and said to them,
"Why this commotion and weeping?
The child is not dead but asleep."
—Mark 5:38-39
Anyone who has sat at the bedside of a sick or dying loved one knows the anguish of silent waiting. There is a sense of inevitable helplessness as we watch the one whom we love suffer, painfully aware of our own limitations. These moments bring into harsh focus how powerless we really are, and this can become a special kind of hell, especially when medical professionals are unable to offer assurances that everything will be “okay.”
Even for people of faith, these times can test our trust in a God that we have been told loves us and who wants none of his children to suffer or be lost.
For those of us who have faced serious or life-threatening illnesses, the feelings of pain, isolation, and helplessness can be just as pronounced, if not more so. Our world can be reduced to our pain, becoming small and limited to the experiences of suffering we face as we live moment to moment.
I remember an encounter that I had many years ago with a young woman—I’ll call her Kayla—who had been hospitalized because of a serious infection related to her HIV status and who had been placed in isolation in the local hospital. When the nursing staff asked me to visit, I was informed of her condition in the most general terms and told that I would need to follow the hospital’s protocols for patients in isolation by wearing a gown, gloves, and a mask while visiting Kayla. (Keep in mind that this was years before the coronavirus pandemic when masks became a part of daily life.) Having been in isolation for several days, the staff was worried about Kayla’s emotional and spiritual well-being, and they thought it might be good for us to have a conversation.
Anyone who has done this kind of ministry knows that there is no way to anticipate what will happen when you go into the patient’s room. This visit was complicated by the isolation protocols, including the mask. But what happened when I entered that hospital room was beyond anything I could have imagined. Once I passed through the two doors, into the sterile, cold, impersonal space—even by hospital standards—I was confronted by a vibrant, open woman who was the mother of two, who was also around my age, and who wanted nothing more than to be with her two “babies” again.
Had the days in isolation weighed on Kayla? Yes, but only because it meant that she had to be away from her children, and she was worried about finances and her job. She showed me pictures of her children and talked about them. I was happy to listen. They were obviously the loves of her life. But Kayla was just as excited to show me her Bible and the journal in which she wrote her prayers and copied down scripture verses that had meaning for her. That journal contained the story of a woman who had worked through drug addiction and who had rediscovered sobriety—and peace—through the stories she read in the pages of her Bible and in her love for her children. She had been sober for quite a while and, much to my surprise, she wasn’t remotely confounded by her medical condition or even by the fact that she was in isolation in a sterile hospital room.
For my part, I wanted to tear off the hospital mask, to be able to talk face-to-face, even if I didn’t know what to say to Kayla. This woman’s simple faith had—and was continuing to—transform her and it was beautiful to behold. As this Sunday’s First Reading from Wisdom reminds us, “God did not make death, / nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living” (1:13). The faith Kayla demonstrated was the same faith shown by that nameless woman who touched Jesus’ cloak two millennia ago.
Jesus healing the bleeding woman in the Roman Catacomb of Marcellinus and Peter (4th century)
One easily overlooked detail in the Gospel proclaimed this Sunday is that the story of the synagogue official and the woman “afflicted with hemorrhages” were both people of privilege. The official would have been a respected member of the community, and the nameless woman who had suffered for so many years was a person of some means who could afford the care of physicians. But, as Saint Mark helps us see, their status and wealth were not enough to ensure that the official’s daughter could be saved or that the woman, herself, could be healed. Because of their desperation, both the official and the suffering woman risked their status and position and reached out to Jesus, hoping, trusting that he could give them what they needed most.
In many ways, the stories of these women and Kayla’s story intersect. At their lowest, when all their own resources and strategies were exhausted, they were laid bare and reached out, as so many of us have when see someone we love—or when we ourselves—suffer. But it is here that we discover the Good News that Saint Mark’s proclaims to us: Jesus—whom Pope Francis has called the “Wellspring of Life”—is able to accomplish what we cannot, lifting up those who are laid low, offering God’s comfort, healing, and wholeness when we are most in need.
O God, who through the grace of adoption
chose us to be children of light,
grant, we pray,
that we may not be wrapped in the darkness of error
but always be seen to stand in the bright light of truth.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
-Collect for the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
