Pastor’s Pen
St. Augustine Catholic Church
Sunday, June 27, 2021
Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Times
Our Savior, Jesus, destroyed death and brought light through to the Gospel.
Brothers and Sisters,
Our first reading of this Mass tells us that death, which we know as a common phenomenon in our physical and material world, did not come from God. He rather created Man, that is, our first parents in purity and grace. They knew no sin nor death. He placed them in the Garden of Paradise for good living and to enjoy His blessings, but with the command, “Do not eat the fruit in the center of the garden for any day you eat it, you will die”. Right? They were later tempted by the devil and they fell. A new experience of guilt came to them. They lost their habitation in the garden where they had been living. As a consequence of this offense, pain, suffering, and death came into the world to them. From them, death spread to all humanity. They, therefore, became condemned as a sinful humanity to live without death, so to say. So it was the devil who brought death into the world and thus, humanity lost the happiness God had given them. But God in his infinite love and mercy for humanity chose to forgive them through the suffering and death of His son, Our Lord Jesus Christ to repair this guilt and fall of Man. Therefore, death should no longer be seen by people with faith as an unforgiven punishment, but as a new direction to be able to live with and struggle to do good and live a life capable of uniting us with God. So now, even though we still experience death in the world today, it is now considered as a passage from death to new life in God and will continue to be from generation to generation, even by those yet unborn.
However, another controversial question could be, “If we don’t die, shall we not suffer from overpopulation and over crowdedness where people would be moving like ants in the world?” I don’t have the answer but think about it as one of the mysteries in God which we don’t have a perfect answer thereby it is beyond our comprehension.
The healing of the daughter of Jairus and the woman with the issue of blood can be seen as God’s continued love of us as people created in His image and likeness despite our weaknesses and failures to that which is right. But He continues to love by His spiritual and physical gifts of healing and other areas to do us good as His children capable of inheriting everlasting life.
Amen.
Fr. Chris
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