From Archbishop Donoghue

Mass at the Donnellan School
January 30, 2001

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Tuesday of the 4^th Week of the Year

Dear Friends in Christ, and especially, my dear young friends and students here at the Donnellan School,

One of the things that we must all admit from time to time, is that it is not easy to be good. Just think about it – to love someone is to be good, but how easy is loving someone? It means we have to put up with things that we might not like if we love the person – it means that we might have to stop what we are doing, if that person needs our help and can’t wait – it means we might have to listen to that person’s troubles when we have already plenty of troubles of our own – and the list goes on. It is not always easy to love – it very often takes determination and hard work on our part.

In the same way, we know that it is good to do charitable deeds – to do, in other words, good works for those who are poor, who are sick, or in some way debilitated, or limited in what they are able to do for themselves. But again, it is not easy to do this. People who work for the St. Vincent de Paul Society can tell you about this – they often have to help people, but in helping people, they sometimes have to deal with situations that are not easy – situations where they have to hear the anger of other people, or where they have to see the bad things that people sometimes do to one another when they are living in poverty, or where they have to take off time from their own work or their own families, and tend to the needs of people they do not even know, but who need them, because they have no where else to turn.

No matter how much we want to do good, no matter how much we want to love people and to help people out, there will always be difficulties and hardships involved in doing these things. And this is what is meant by the words we have heard in today’s readings – first, in the reading from the Book of Hebrews, where it says:

For the sake of the joy which lay before him, [Christ] endured the cross, heedless of its shame…[and also] the opposition of sinners.

In the Gospel we hear two wonderful stories about how hardships in the way of doing good are overcome – one by the woman with the disease, and one by our Lord Himself.

The woman we read about had a very serious illness, what is called a hemorrhage. This meant that she was, for some unknown reason, bleeding on the inside of her body, and no one could make the bleeding stop, and eventually, as we all know, if you lose enough blood, you will die. This woman was no one special or famous – she was like many of us – she had gone to doctors for years, but they couldn’t help her. So on this day, when the Lord came by, she knew – or maybe it would be better to say, she believed that He could do something for her. She didn’t have any credentials – there was no good reason why the Lord should stop on His way and deal with her, or so she thought. And so, because she was so desperate, she managed to sneak up close to our Lord – possible she had to get down on her hands and knees and crawl around the many people who were crowding around our Lord – but finally, she got close enough just to touch the edge of the coat that He was wearing. What happened then was amazing – her bleeding stopped immediately, and she knew – in her heart and mind – that she had been cured. Our Lord knew that someone had touched Him, and that the power of healing had gone out of His own body, and He found the woman – not because He wanted to ask her what she was doing – He already knew that – but because He wanted to tell her how impressed he was with her faith – the fact that she had believed that He could cure her, just by her touching Him, without Him saying or doing anything else. This woman’s faith had been so strong, that she had crawled on her hands and knees to touch Him, because she believed that His touch would cure her – and she was cured – because she did not let the obstacles to getting close to our Lord stand in her way.

In the same way our Lord also overcame some obstacles to doing good on that same day. The little girl that He had been asked to cure, when He got to her home, was already dead – or so the crowd that had gathered outside her house told Him. But Jesus said to the girl’s father, (words that we all need to remember) “Fear is not what is needed here – what you need to have is trust.” And even though the people laughed at Him, saying to themselves, “What on earth does He think He can do – the girl is already dead!” – even though the opposition to Him was great, our Lord pushed them aside and entered the house, He raised the little girl from her bed and back from the dead, He spoke sweetly to her, and told the foolish people to get her something to eat, because He really cared about her - enough to ignore the trouble, enough to ignore the laughter of those who doubted, enough to have gone out of His way in order to bring this girl back to her father, who had believed so strongly in the power of the Lord to do anything.

The lesson for us is clear – not matter what gets in the way – no matter what other people think – no matter how difficult the problem seems – we have to stay faithful to our belief in the Lord, and His power to take care of the difficulties – the opposition we are facing. For if we remain faithful to Him, He will remain faithful to us. If we go through all the difficulties in our way to get to Him and to ask Him for the answers, for the cure, for whatever it is that we need, then He will go through all the difficulties and more, to get to us, and to grant us the answer to our problems, and the power to deal with the things that we must deal with.

To sum it all up, let us all hear again, and memorize, and say to ourselves, without fail, when the times get tough, the beautiful words from the first reading, for these are words that can help us through anything:

Remember how Jesus endured opposition, and do not grow despondent or abandon the struggle – keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, and He will inspire you, and make your faith perfect. Keep you eyes fixed on Jesus.

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