The Daughter of Jairus

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the Letter of St. Paul to Timothy, he says, “Jesus himself is our only hope” (cf. 1 Tim. 1:1).

But Our Lady is our teacher of hope. Christ is the Supreme Good. The spirit of Advent largely consists in living close to Our Lady during this particular time when she is carrying Jesus in her womb.

We could think of the whole of our life as a somewhat longer advent—a time of waiting for that definitive moment when we will at last find ourselves with God forever.

The Christian knows that he has to live this advent beside Our Lady every day of his life if he wants to be certain of attaining the only thing in the whole of his existence that is really important—finding Christ in this life, and afterwards being with Him in eternity.

There is no better way of preparing for Christmas, which is now so close, than by keeping Our Lady company, getting to know her and deepening our love and trust in her. Mary imparts a great joy to our souls, because when we turn to her, she leads us to Christ.

In Friends of God we are told, “Mary teaches us to hope. She proclaimed: ‘all generations will call me blessed.’ Humanly speaking, how could she hope for such a thing? Who was she, in the eyes of her contemporaries? The great heroines of the Old Testament—Judith, Esther, Deborah—won a measure of human renown even here on earth...

“What a contrast between Our Lady's hope and our own impatience! We call so often upon God to reward us at once for any little good we have done. For us, no sooner does the very first difficulty appear than we begin to complain. Often we find ourselves incapable of sustaining our efforts, of keeping our hope alive” (Josemaría Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 286).

The ones who become discouraged are not those who undergo difficulties and feel pain. It is those, rather, who do not aspire to sanctity and eternal life, those who despair of ever reaching them, who buckle and give up.

The attitude of the former is shaped by a lack of faith, by comfort-seeking, lukewarmness, an excessive attachment to earthly goods, which they consider to be the only good things worth having. Discouragement, if it's not remedied, can paralyze any effort to do good and to overcome difficulties.

Sometimes discouragement over one's own failure to advance in sanctity can come about through a lack of willpower, through fear of the effort the ascetical struggle entails, and of having to give up disordered attachments of the senses. Not even apparent failures in our interior struggle, or in our concern to do apostolate, should be cause for dismay.

The graces that we ask of God don't come like a penny in a slot machine. Sometimes the fruits of the responses take time to come, but whoever does things for love of God and for His glory never fails.

We’re told in The Way, “Convince yourself of this truth: your success —this time, in this matter— was to fail. Give thanks to Our Lord…and try again! … You haven't failed; you have gained experience” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Points 404-405).

In a few days' time, we shall see Jesus in the Crib. The sight will be a proof of God's mercy and love. We will be able to say, “On this Christmas night everything inside me stops. I am face to face with him; there is nothing but this Child in the whole of that huge white expanse. He does not say anything, but he is there. … He is God loving me” (Jean Leclerq, A Year with the Liturgy).

And if God becomes man and loves me, how am I going to refuse to seek Him? How am I going to give up hope of finding Him, if He is searching for me?

Let us rid ourselves of any suggestion of discouragement. Neither external difficulties nor our personal wretchedness can do anything to quell the joy of the Christmas which is approaching.

When doors were shut in the face of St. Joseph and Our Lady, humanly speaking, they could have given in to discouragement. But we find St. Joseph is full of optimism. There's a zeal there to solve the problem, to find the solution. He lives out his hope in that difficult situation.

Hope is recognized clearly throughout the Old Testament as one of the most essential characteristics of the true People of God. All eyes are fixed on the distant future when the Messiah will arrive one day.

Lumen gentium of the Second Vatican Council says, “The books of the Old Testament describe the history of salvation in the course of which the coming of Christ into the world was slowly prepared.”

In Genesis we always hear about the victory of the woman over the powers of evil, about a new world (cf. Gen. 3:15). The prophet Hosea announces that Israel will return to its ancient love and will blossom in it (Hos. 2:16).

Isaiah, in the midst of the tribulations of the Chosen People during the ministry of Ezekiel, announces the coming of the Messiah (Isa. 7:14). Micah the prophet will point to Bethlehem of Judah as the place of His birth (Mic. 5:2).

There are just a few days left before we will see Our Lord lying in the manger. The Second Preface of Advent that we're reading these days says: “The prophets proclaimed that he would come. The Virgin Mother carried him in her womb with love beyond all telling. The Baptist prepared the way for his arrival and announced his presence. He has given to us now the joy of looking forward to the mystery of his birth so that, watching in prayer, we may fittingly celebrate the Christmas feast.”

From the stable in Bethlehem to the moment of His ascension into heaven, Our Lord proclaims a message of hope: “Jesus himself is our only hope” (cf. 1 Tim. 1:1).

He is the firm pledge that we will attain to the marvelous future we have been promised—the eternal wedding feast. And so, we look forward to the stable of Bethlehem in watchful hope, understanding that it is only in His company that we can boldly approach God the Father (cf. Eph. 3:12).

Our Lord Himself points out to us that the principal objects of Christian hope are not the good things of this life, which “moth and rust consume, and which thieves can break in and steal” (Matt. 6:19), but the treasures of the “incorruptible heritage” (1 Pet. 1:4) and, above all, the supreme happiness of the eternal possession of God.

We confidently hope that one day He will give us eternal blessedness, and here and now, pardon for our sins, and give us His grace.

As a consequence, hope offers to everyone the means necessary to achieve what has been promised. Seen in this light, the good things of earth can also find a place within the scope of things to be legitimately hoped for, but only insofar as God orders them to our salvation.

We're going to struggle with all our strength, today and always, against those lesser forms of despair which we can experience as loss of heart and dejection, and an excessive concentration on and a nearly exclusive concern with material things and their possession.

Hope lifts us up, keeps us looking forward, particularly in times of difficulty, of the cross, of contradiction, where all the human factors around us might lead us to discouragement or despair.

It's a very important virtue. Sometimes we can talk a lot about faith and about charity, but we can forget a bit about hope. The devil tries to lead us to hope in things of this world, in material things.

I was coming back from Mass one day and I turned on the BBC news. There was a piece of news—this was a number of years ago—about a person called Estée Lauder, who had passed away.

I think she was of Hungarian origin, and she'd gone to New York and set up a cosmetic empire. There was one person in the radio studio who was talking about her and her life and her achievements, but there was also a bit of a comedian there who was sort of throwing a bit of cold water on all of Estée Lauder’s achievements.

He was more or less saying that, Vaseline petroleum jelly, or rub ointment, or any of these things can remove your pimples or your wrinkles or your grey hairs as well as any of Estée Lauder's foundational creams. And then at the end of the whole program, this man said, Ultimately, what Estée Lauder was doing was selling hope to people.

It was a rather interesting description of the cosmetic industry. If somebody will promise to take away your pimples and your wrinkles and your grey hair and put it into a nice bottle with a nice price and make it smell nice, probably many people will buy it. We all want that type of hope.

Later that day, in a picture in a magazine, I happened to see a rather elderly lady. She'd been very prominent thirty, forty years previously. The poor lady was in her late 80s, early 90s, and I think she had more wrinkles than any other person I've ever seen.

I was thinking, she must have had access to all of these foundation creams, but it doesn't seem to have done her too much good.

The message really of the story was not to put our hope in human things. We're here to hope in spiritual things, to hope in God. Hope leads us to abandon ourselves in God and to do all that we can to undertake a deliberate ascetical struggle.

That struggle moves us to begin again many times, to be constant in our apostolate and patient in adversity; to have a more supernatural outlook on all aspects of life and its vicissitudes.

Ronald Knox said once, “In proportion as the world grows weary of its Christian hope, the alternative is materialism, of a type with which we're already familiar—that and nothing else. The world's experience of Christianity has been like a great love, the love of a lifetime. … No new voice...will have any appeal for us, if it does not bring us back to the stable at Bethlehem—there to humble our pride, and enlarge our charity, and deepen our sense of reverence with the sight of a dazzling purity” (Ronald A. Knox, Sermon on Christmas).

We need to trust in Our Lord. Our Lord is never too late to give us the help and the graces that we need.

We're told by the prophet Isaiah, “Hearken to me, you stubborn of heart, you who are far from deliverance. I bring near my deliverance; it is not far off, and my salvation will not tarry” (Isa. 46:12-13).

Our hope in God has to be all the greater, the less plentiful the means at our disposal or the more apparently insurmountable the difficulties.

On a certain occasion when Our Lord entered Capharnaum, St. Luke says, “They were all waiting for him” (Luke 8:40). All the people were full of the hope that Our Lord had shown them.

In the thick of that crowd, one person is singled out by the Evangelist. He's identified as a ruler of the synagogue, Jairus. This man begins to beg Jesus to cure his daughter.

“He fell at his feet” (Luke 8:41). He has no hesitation in giving that public proof of his humility and of his faith in Our Lord.

Immediately, at the indication from Our Lord, they all move off in the direction of the house of Jairus. The girl, twelve years of age, is dying. She must be in the throes of death by this time.

Just at this very moment, when they've gone part of the way, inconspicuous in the middle of the jostling crowd, a woman who suffers from a hemorrhage that makes her unclean according to the Law comes up behind Our Lord and touches the edge of His cloak (Luke 8:43-44). She too is a woman full of deep humility.

Jairus has demonstrated his hope and his humility by prostrating himself before Our Lord in front of everyone. But this woman wants to pass unnoticed.

She's anxious not to take up any of Our Lord's time. She considers herself too unimportant to be noticed by Our Lord. It's enough if she can just touch His cloak.

Both miracles are to be fully accomplished. The woman, for whom the skill of so many doctors has been unavailing, will be cured forever (Luke 8:47-48).

The daughter of Jairus will go on to live a completely healthy life even though when the retinue arrives, after the delay of their journey, she has breathed her last.

Whilst the encounter with the woman with the issue of blood is taking place, what has become of Jairus? It seems that he fell into the background. It's not too difficult to imagine that he must be somewhat distraught, because his daughter had been on the point of death when he left her to go and seek out Our Lord.

Jesus, on the other hand, does not appear to be in any hurry. He doesn't even seem to attach much importance to whatever is happening in the house of Jairus.

When Jesus arrives, the girl has already died (cf. Mark 8:49-56). There's no longer any possibility of preventing her death. It seems that Our Lord has arrived too late.

And precisely now, when as far as human intervention is concerned nothing can be done, when all natural hope is gone and everything calls for collapse into grief, the moment has come to awaken supernatural hope.

There may be many times in our life when natural hope seems to have disappeared. All possibilities seem to have stopped. We're focused, or we come up against a brick wall.

That's when Our Lord wants us to look upwards. Or sometimes in our professional life, or in our finances, or in our health, or in our marriage, or in our family, Our Lord sweeps the feet from under us. He leaves us hanging there. He wants us to learn what real hope, supernatural hope, is all about.

Every time that we go to the sacraments—Confession or Holy Communion—we get an increase of all the theological virtues of faith, and of hope, and of charity, so that our hearts and souls can be full of this virtue, and so that we can transmit it in abundance with our words, with our actions, to our immediate family, to our spouses, to our neighbors, to our colleagues.

That's what the Christian vocation in the middle of the world is all about. You've got to lift up the world. You've got to bring it to God. Help those souls to be full of hope.

Jesus never arrives too late. He just demands a greater faith and a greater hope.

He waited until it was ‘too late’ in this instance in order to teach us that supernatural hope remains, like a solid foundation, amid the ruins of human hope, and all we need is unlimited trust in Him who can do anything He wills at any moment.

It's now very important for a parent who may see a child going astray, or going down the wrong path, or distancing themselves from God, or following a pathway that may be the complete opposite of what they've been brought up to follow, with values completely contrasting with those of the parents.

These may be situations of supernatural hope. We put all our trust in God as we learn the value of prayer, of abandonment.

This passage of the Gospel may remind us of our own lives, when it may seem that Our Lord has not intervened to meet our needs, when grace, maybe, has delayed in coming, when we put our penny in the slot machine and the grace did not come out immediately. It may be that Our Lord is giving us a much greater grace than we have been asking for.

This may remind us of so many occasions when in front of the tabernacle we have been aware in our heart of words very similar to those that Our Lord said: “Do not be afraid, only believe” (Luke 8:50).

To hope in Jesus is to trust in Him, to let Him act, to let Him do what He wills.

I remember in Singapore one time there were quite a number of elderly priests in the home for the aged. There was a much younger priest too. Maybe he was twenty, thirty years younger, but he got the cancer. He died very quickly.

I remember remarking to one of the nuns there about that fact, and she just replied, “God's ways are not our ways.”

Sometimes we have to trust in God, in the way that He does things. Leave everything in His hands. The greater the trust, the fewer the elements we should need to rely on in human terms.

Devotion to the Blessed Virgin is the greatest guarantee of our achieving the means necessary for our salvation and the eternal happiness for which we have been destined.

Mary is truly ‘the port in a storm for those who are shipwrecked.’ St. Alphonsus Liguori said she is “the consolation of the world, ransom of captives, joy of the sick” (Alphonsus Liguori, Visit to the Blessed Sacrament; St. Ephrem, The Essential Mary Handbook).

During these days that precede Christmas, and always, we can ask Our Lady how to hope in her son Jesus—just like she and Joseph did on the way to Bethlehem—to hope in Him, the Messiah whose advent was foretold by all the prophets.

Lumen gentium of the Second Vatican Council says: “She shines forth on earth, until the day of the Lord shall come, a sign of sure hope and comfort to the pilgrim People of God.”

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

MVF