4 July 2022
Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s Gospel recounts one of Jesus’ greatest miracles: the raising of the little girl back to life. It is a powerful witness to Jesus as God, as the one who has power over life and death. But there is a curious line that Jesus speaks which has shaped the Christian consciousness on death ever since. Even before he raises her to life again, he tells the crowd: “The girl is not dead but sleeping.” Within the narrative of the Gospel, this statement prefigures Jesus’ miracle. But it contains for us Christians a profound outlook on death and eternal life.
In the book of Acts (7:60) and the early Church, Christians who pass away were said to have “fallen asleep.” This phrase, in reference to death, reveals a new orientation to death that Christ reveals to the world: death is not the end of our existence! Christ’s cross – which we boast in – promises us new life in the world to come. On this Independence Day in the United States, we rightly celebrate the history of our nation. As Christians this day, let us also recall the independence Christ won for us from sin and death, and that Christ promises to raise us up, like the girl in the Scriptures, to be with him forever in the life that is to come.