Paternal Love and Tears, Fourth Tuesday (II), February 4, 2014

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Bernadette Parish, Fall River, MA
Tuesday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
February 4, 2014
2 Sam 18:9-10.14.24-25.30-19:3, Ps 86, Mk 5:21-43

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today we encounter several instances of paternal love that can help us to appreciate the love God has for us and the type of love we’re called to have for others.
• In the Gospel, we meet Jairus, the synagogue official who comes to Jesus to beg him to come quickly to heal his 12 year old daughter who was at the point of death. By this point, Jesus was already persona non grata at the synagogue because he dared to do good and heal on the Lord’s day. For a synagogue official to approach him under any circumstances would have been viewed by many in the synagogue as an act of betrayal, almost consorting with an enemy. Yet Jairus didn’t just approach Jesus, but fell down at his feet and begged him to come to lay his hands on his daughter. So great was the love this dad had for his little girl that he was willing to humiliate himself, if that’s what it took, to cry to save his girl’s life. That love was stronger than his reputation, than his desire to maintain his position, than almost everything other thing he valued.
• We see a similar love in the first reading. When David saw the Cushite messenger running alone, he anticipated that it would be good news. The news he wanted was that Absalom’s troops had been defeated but that Absalom was safe. He had instructed his army, “Be gentle with young Absalom for my sake.” When the messenger arrived, however, and told him, ““Let my lord the king receive the good news that this day the LORD has taken your part, freeing you from the grasp of all who rebelled against you,” David immediately asked, “Is young Absalom safe?” That was far more important than the details of a victory on the battlefield. When the emissary indicated that he was dead, the King went away from the crowd to weep, crying out, ““My son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you, Absalom, my son, my son!” The victory was turned into mourning for everyone as the army saw how much the king was grieving for his son.
• Both of these episodes show us what paternal love is and give us an indication of the type of love, the type of weeping, the type of lengths to which God with even greater love acts and weeps for us. David cried out, “if only I had died instead of you, my son!,” and God, through David’s 28th generation grandson according to the flesh, actually did. God so loved the world, he so loved each of us, that he sent his only Son [to die for us] so that we might not perish but might have eternal life. He went so much further than Jairus. We see God’s tears when Jesus’ wept over Jerusalem because so many within failed to accept his salvation. Pope Francis talked about this weeping of God this morning in his homily in the Vatican. Basing himself off of the type of paternal love and tears we see in King David and Jairus, he commented, “The first thing these scenes make us think of is when we say in the Creed, ‘I believe in God the Father.’ They called to mind God’s paternity. God is like that with us. Someone might say, “But Father, God doesn’t cry,” but he absolutely does! Let us remember JEsus who wept looking at Jerusalem. ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how many times I wanted to gather your children together like a hen gathers her young under her wings.’ God weeps! Jesus has wept for us! And that weeping of Jesus is in fact the image of the weeping of the Father, who loves all of us.” He went on to say that the Father loves us like the Father of the Prodigal Son; even after we’ve squandered half of his goods, he wants to show us that he loves us so much more than those goods. “That’s our God! And our paternity must be like that. The Father … cannot understand who he is without the son and for this reason needs the son: he waits for him, he loves him, he searches for him, he forgives him, he wants him close, as close as a hen with her chicks.”
• We see one other example of this fatherhood in the middle of the Gospel. So many of the early saintly theologians in the Church pondered the paternity of Jesus, the one who learned the essence of fatherhood from God the Father. Jesus is a father, they taught, insofar as he is the one who gives life by the power of his resurrection in the Sacrament of Baptism. He wants to enter into that type of relationship with us, which we see in the healing of the woman with a hemorrhage for a dozen years. As Jesus was hastily going with the crowd to Jairus’ house, jostling with all the people on the way as always happens in the Middle East where “personal space” doesn’t really exist, someone touched him differently than the way everyone else was bumping into him. And Jesus stopped to ask who touched him. The people with him must have thought he was losing perspective. It would be like an ambulance on the way to the emergency room with a patient about to die stopped to investigate a paper cup on the road it had just run over. Someone was about to die and Jesus seemed more interested in who had touched him. But that person wasn’t just a stranger! When the woman finally came up, with “fear and trembling,” and fell down before Jesus to tell him the whole truth, he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you. God in peace and be cured!” Daughter! Jesus stopped for his own little girl on the way to cure Jairus’ little girl. And Jesus loved the woman with the hemorrhage even more than Jairus loved his daughter.
• That’s the love that Jesus has for us. That’s the love that God the Father has for us. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for us. He’ll suffer any inconvenience. He’ll pause for us even in the midst of a true emergency. Our response to this love is meant to be two-fold. First, we need to let God love us in this way and not become those Jerusalem who refused to be gathered by him under his wings. Second, we need to learn from his love a similar love for others, a love like David’s for Absalom, a love like Jairus’ for his daughter, something that far exceeds normal paternal affection but is a real spiritual participation in God’s love for his beloved sons and daughters whom God has entrusted to an earthly mom’s or dad’s particular care.
• And the greatest example of that love for God for us, a love that transforms us, happens here at Mass, where we, Jesus’ beloved sons and daughters, have the privilege to do far more than touch the outermost part of his garment. We do far more than touch his actual body on the outside. We touch him and our touched by him on the inside. And not only does a hemorrhage of death dry up, but a font of life is renewed. Jesus’ words to Jairus’ daughter are highly significant. He grasped her by the hand and said, “Little girl, I say to you, arise!” That word “arise” is actually the word for the resurrection. Holding her hand, Jesus told her, “Be risen from the dead” And that’s what Jesus says to us as we come into communion with his risen body and blood. Holding far more than our hands, but holding our whole body and soul on the inside, he says to us “Little girl, little Son, be raised from the dead!” That’s how his paternal love comes to its fulfillment! That’s the way that his paternal tears are dried and his tears — and ours — are turned into joy!

The readings for today’s Mass were: