Your Faith Has Saved You July 2

Your Daily Tripod July 2, 2006

Let us pray: Jesus, give us the faith of the parent who Jesus encounters in today’s Good News. Touch us and heal us and those we love from the hurt of the world. Change our mourning into dancing so we can sing your endless praise. Amen.

Study
By Rev. Joe Mc Closkey, S.J.

http://www.usccb.org/nab/070206.shtml

“Your faith has saved you.” Mark 4:34

A pious fraud or two in our lives gives piety a bad name in our hearts. A zealous worshipper of God has real piety. The synagogue official in our Gospel is the genuine article. His love of his daughter brings him to Jesus with great expectations. “Please, come lay your hands her that she may get well and live.” Genuine piety brings the nitty-gritty of life to the Lord expecting results. Jesus comes to our needs when we invite him.

The woman afflicted with hemorrhages is a different case. She sneaks up on the Lord. Her faith is great in the sense that she believes she need but touch him to have results. Jesus is amazed by her faith and calls her to the attention of his disciples. “Your faith has saved you” rings down through the ages. It touches our hearts in many ways. We knowthat we do not have to sneak up on Jesus.

The people who come from the synagogue official’s house represent all those who have given up on Jesus. They put limits on what he can do. How to bring life back into our hopes of God is the message of the raising up of the child. Jesus establishes contact with us in the good lives of our brothers and sister. Faith is passed on to family and friends by the great expectations we have of each other. Hope springs eternal when it is based onour relationship to Christ. Faith is the strength of our relationship to him that is nourished by all the goodness of life that challenges us to reach for the beyond.

Action

Fr. Joe will be doing the Sunday reflection for Your Daily Tripod whenever he is in town. Thank you Fr. Joe. Visit his web page for more inspiration from Fr. Joe’s spiritual journey. http://frjoemccloskey.tripod.com/

Perhaps you would like to share how the daily scriptures (http://www.usccb.org/nab/) inspire your Fourth Day Journey of piety, study and action. Let me know by posting a comment or sending an e-mail with your requested date…