I try to give to
the poor people for love what the rich could get for money.No, I wouldn’t touch a leper for a thousand
pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.
Too often we
underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an
honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the
potential to turn a life around.
The Book of Wisdom
tells us that God created us not for death but for life, for he fashioned all things that they might have being.We are creatures formed in the image of the Lord’s own nature, created that we might be his representatives, his face
in the world, his revelation on earth.But although God formed us to be imperishable, it is only through
righteousness, through right relationship with God, that we can come to
participate in eternal life and live in the perfection of God’s love.In Psalm 30, the psalmist recognizes God’s
life-giving role in his own existence:you brought me up from the netherworld; you
preserved me… We were meant to be eternal, if only we open ourselves to
this possibility and act according to God’s will.
Jesus, too, is a
life-giving force in chapter five of Mark’s Gospel.In the intercalated stories of the raising of
the daughter of Jairus and the healing of the woman afflicted with hemorrhages, we have two instances of Jesus
restoring life to those who are dead, or as good as dead.When the woman, who has been afflicted for twelve years and therefore
ritually unclean, dares to penetrate the crowd and touch his cloak, Jesus stops, seeking to identify the person who
has touched him.This moment of contact affects him, and profoundly so; it is important to Jesus that he encounter
the woman as a human being, a being to whom his touch has restored life.Indeed, he engages with her, affirming her
suffering, her hope, and her great faith.Likewise, Jesus meets Jairus’ daughter where she is, in death, and
raises her to new life – Little girl, I
say to you, arise! – restoring her to community, to relationship, transmitting
by his touch the love of God that is life-giving.
It is not only
through his ministry on earth that Jesus gives life; Paul reminds the
Corinthians that Jesus became poor so
that by his poverty, they might
become rich, and share the wealth that is their very existence, their life,
with all around them.Only in so doing,
only by imitating Jesus himself, his sacrifice and his love, can they come to
know that love in its perfection.Jesus
came that we might have life; it’s up to us to reach out and touch the cloak of
Christ, to open to that life in all its plenitude, to embrace his life-giving
love, and to know, once and for all, the source of our life.
