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Homily for Tues of the 4th Wk in OT, 4 Feb 2025, Mk 5:21-43
The Gospel tells us Jesus felt power come out of him as soon as the woman with hemorrhage touched him and got healed. Let’s reflect today on POWER and what Mark is telling us about it in this double narrative with three main characters: Jairus, the woman with hemorrhage, and Jairus’ daughter.
Maybe because we are familiar with sayings like “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” our common notion of power tends to be negative. We tend to equate being powerful with being abusive or lording it over. And yet, today’s reading portrays Jesus to us as a man of power. Mark also calls him a man who not only “spoke with authority”, but also exercised authority over unclean spirits, and that people sought power from him.
It was a reflection of one of our guests at our last CBCP plenary assembly, Archbishop Giovanni Caesare Pagazzi of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education, that brought me to a better understanding of power. You see, we often don’t realize how much power we possess just by being alive, healthy, functional and productive, until we actually experience getting sick or disabled by age, accident, or disease. Some people cannot even feed, wash, or clothe themselves. Some are prevented from speaking, hearing, walking, working or even relating with others because of physical or mental disabilities that render them powerless or helpless. And those of us who are well often don’t realize how much we can do for others by just being there for them, until we get to hear profuse expressions of gratitude, such as from a former student to a teacher, or from a patient to a doctor who treated him or a nurse who cared for him, or a priest who had counselled him.
Of course we are familiar with people who seek power for the wrong reasons. Remember how Jesus had reprimanded James and John, when the two brothers sought to be positioned, one at his left and the other at his right? Jesus taught them, rather, where and how to seek true power and greatness: not by lording it over but by being of service and by giving one’s life for the ransom of many.
The devil thought he could tempt Jesus with the wrong notion of power, not once but three times. But Jesus saw through the emptiness of Satan’s offer of power—the power to make short cuts, to turn stones into bread, the power to be reckless and carefree, the power to indulge and to call attention to oneself. By refusing to submit to power in Satan’s terms, he became more truly powerful. St. Paul speaks of it paradoxically as “power in weakness.” He tells us he begged God three times to remove his weakness, but three times he also got the reply, “My grace is enough for you; for in weakness power reaches perfection. It is when I am weak that I am strong.”
It was love and compassion that truly empowered Jesus and enabled him also to empower others, such as by bringing healing to the sick, forgiveness to sinners, cleansing to lepers and new life to the dead. It was love and compassion that enabled him to rejoice with those who rejoiced and weep with those who wept. It enabled him to share God’s power, even if it could bring about his own weakening, his emptying of self, his passion and death.
