God's Time

The appearance of Jesus Christ was a herald of a new covenant for people faithful to God. Note that word - "new". Christ's 3-year ministry - astonishing for its brevity and impact - was to establish a new set of laws to follow. This new covenant would strip away the old laws of Leviticus and set forth a gentler and kinder relationship with God. 

The Prophet Jeremiah foretold of this new covenant in chapter 31 of his writings in the Bible:

"Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke..."

Imagine this: you are a faithful Jew in the year 30 A.D.and this Jewish man comes out of nowhere and tells you the laws your people have followed for a millennia...are no longer required. That your relationship with God is now thru Jesus Christ; a relationship based upon love, not fear. Simple rules - love one another as God loves you.

Sometimes I'm not surprised the Jews rejected Christ. 

But let me turn your attention to today's Homily from the ever-marvelous Bishop Robert Barron:

Friends, the centerpiece of today’s Gospel is Jesus healing the hemorrhaging woman. Having a flow of blood for twelve years meant that anyone with whom she came in contact would be considered unclean. She couldn’t, in any meaningful sense, participate in the ordinary life of her society. The woman touches Jesus—and how radical and dangerous an act this was, since it should have rendered him unclean. But so great is her faith that her touch, instead, renders her clean. Jesus effectively restores her to full participation in her community. But what is perhaps most important is this: Jesus implicitly puts an end to the ritual code of the book of Leviticus. What he implies is that the identity of the new Israel, the Church, would not be through ritual behaviors but through imitation of him. Notice please how central this is in the New Testament. We hear elsewhere in the Gospels that Jesus declares all foods clean, and throughout the letters of Paul we hear a steady polemic against the Law. All of this is meant to show that Jesus is at the center of the new community. Please watch all of Bishop Barron's homily.  It is, as ever for the Bishop, marvelous and filled with the Holy Spirit. Then grab your Bible and do as the Bishop suggests - read Mark Chapter 5. (If you don't have a Bible, you can find the chapter here.)  It really is a remarkable chapter about faith, healing, the sensitivity of Jesus, and our own relentless need for everything to be "now" (yes, even in 30-something A.D., impatience and selfishness was a prominent characteristic, even in a man of God like Jairus). God's time is a concept that humans can't process. And yet it persists - and we must allow it to work in our lives as God directs.