As many of you know I’ve spent the last two weeks at the University of Portland serving as a delegate to the 2009 Chapter for the Indiana Province of the Congregation of Holy Cross. Every three years our community holds these Chapter meetings as a period of discernment and planning, writing legislation and policy that will govern our communal life and mission.
All of the forty-seven delegates to this year’s Chapter were divided into four committees each responsible for a different aspect of our brotherhood. I was assigned to the “Mission and Community Life” committee and we were charged with examining reports from our various houses and ministries, and drafting legislation that responded to their situations and needs.
Reading all of the reports from our houses and ministries, I was struck by the great variety of work done by our members, in very different settings all around the world.
For example, we have responsibility for two major American universities – places of higher education that have annual operating budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And we also have responsibility for an orphanage and a primary school for street children in Santiago, Chile.
We administer parishes like Holy Redeemer, serving working and middle class families. But we also run parishes like St. Vincent de Paul, which serves Portland’s homeless population, including many people with mental illness and drug addiction. And halfway around the world, we serve Holy Cross Parish in Dandora, an immense slum near Nairobi, Kenya.
When I read today’s Gospel, I couldn’t help but think of these seemingly disparate ministries and how, in reality, they all have the same essential mission. Today’s Gospel gives us two characters who are as different as can be – and yet, St. Mark puts them together for a reason.
Today’s Gospel begins with a synagogue official named Jairus who comes to ask Jesus to heal his dying daughter. Although St. Mark doesn’t spell out the details of Jairus’ life, we can certainly assume some things from what we are told. First, that we’re given his name means he was clearly a person of some importance.
We know he is a synagogue official, so presumably he was a close follower of the Law, a man of some power, well known and respected. His servants come and tell him of his daughter’s death, so we might also assume he was a man of some wealth.
Perhaps most importantly, all of this contributes to Jairus feeling comfortable enough to seek Jesus out and ask Him to come to his home and to heal his daughter.
As the story moves to Jairus’ house, we’re introduced to the second character, another person seeking healing from Jesus. But this person doesn’t feel that they can speak to Jesus and ask to be healed – instead, this person wishes only to touch His clothes and experience Jesus’ healing power from a safe distance.
This suffering person is a nameless woman. Again, we can assume certain things about her. We are not told her name, so she must not have been someone the crowd would necessarily know or respect. As a woman in a patriarchal society she was not powerful or prestigious. She was destitute: St. Mark tells us that she spent all of the money she had on doctors whose treatments simply made her worse.
Her ailment, a hemorrhage of blood, would have made her ritually unclean – unfit for worship in the synagogue. Anyone she touched would be similarly unclean: so she was an outcast in many ways. No wonder she didn’t feel she could dare to speak to Jesus and ask for healing as Jairus had done.
The two main characters in today’s Gospel are as different as different can be . . . we might say, like the University of Notre Dame and Dandora Parish in Kenya. And yet St. Mark gives us these characters in one story, to consider them together.
As different as Jairus and the ailing woman were, they were alike in what was most important and essential: their longing for mercy and healing. They both had great faith in Jesus’ ability to answer their need. However different the details of their lives might have been, the experiences they each had brought them to a place where they were ripe for an encounter with Jesus Christ.
Rich or poor, man or woman, black or white, gay or straight, American or Kenyan, confident or shy . . . whatever the differences among us might be, what all of us most long for and most need, whether we know it or not, is a merciful and healing encounter with Jesus Christ.
That’s why St. Mark purposefully put these two very different characters’ stories together . . . and that’s why Holy Cross priests can staff such different ministries, among such different people all around the world. Whatever the differences in ministry, our mission is always the same: to bring people to an encounter with the living Christ.
A little over a week ago, on the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Church began what Pope Benedict XVI has announced as a “Year for Priests.” The year coincides with the 150th anniversary of the death of St. John Vianney, the patron saint of priests. The year is meant to inspire all the faithful to cultivate priestly vocations, and to pray for the constant renewal of those who live that vocation in the Church.
We priests are given St. John Vianney as a patron and model because he knew well that the priest’s mission is to bring others to an encounter with Christ – to teach them to pray; to give them Jesus’ mercy in Reconciliation; to give them His flesh and blood in the Eucharist.
The story goes that as John Vianney was walking toward the village he was assigned to as pastor, he met a young boy and said to him: “Show me the way to Ars, and I will show you the way to heaven” . . . and, of course, the Way to heaven is Christ! He showed his people Christ.
As I finish my assignment as parochial vicar here at Holy Redeemer, I don’t imagine even for a moment that I can compare myself with St. John Vianney. But I do dare to hope and pray, that even in my weakness, I have, in some way, helped bring you to an encounter with Christ – because in the end, that is all that could possibly matter.
And I am certainly filled with great gratitude for the time I have spent here, and the many friends I have made, and the many ways in which the people of Holy Redeemer have helped teach me what it means to be a priest. As I told the children on the last day of school, “we kind of grew up together.”
They say that like first love, a priest’s first assignment forever remains a special place in his heart. I can assure you that will indeed be the case for me.
Oremus pro invicem – Let us pray for one another.
