He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease… He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!” And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age).

— Mark 5:34, 41-42a

I don’t know about you, but God’s timing is always much too slow for me. I am a quick-thinking, decisive person, and I need God ASAP. I worked in entertainment advertising for twenty years, and everything had to happen instantly. Our deadlines were tight and non-negotiable. While I was working for those twenty years, I was begging God, “Please let me be a nun. I know I am called to it. Why can’t I do it NOW?” I had to be out of debt to enter a Convent, and it seemed like it was taking forever. I wasn’t sure if God would ever answer my prayers. When I entered the Convent in 2012, I was 46 years old. In the years since I have been in community, I have realized that all the skills I learned in advertising were exactly the skills I needed to proclaim the Gospel to the world.

Today’s Gospel passage gives us useful insight into God’s timing. The two healing stories contain parallels. Jesus heals a woman who has been hemorrhaging for twelve years, and he heals a young girl who is twelve years old. They are both daughters. The young girl is the daughter of a synagogue leader, and the woman is referred to by Jesus as “daughter.”

Jesus shows no partiality to either the daughter of a prominent authority figure or an outcast “unclean” woman who violates protocol to obtain access to Jesus’ miraculous powers. Both are equal in God’s sight, so Jesus lingers to speak with the woman who touches his cloak and seems to be wasting valuable time as the synagogue official’s child lies dying. Just as in the story of Lazarus from the Gospel of John, he is portrayed as waiting too long, allowing someone to die. And yet, in God’s perfect timing, Jesus takes the hand of the girl and heals her.

God is all-powerful: no matter how dire the situation is, it is never too late. Healing and transformation can take place at any stage of the human journey. God can heal by restoring us to this life or by bringing us into eternal life, and God’s timing is always perfectly aligned with God’s plan.

Reflect: Have you ever known a person who was healed or transformed after it seemed too late for them? Think about God’s timing in your own life. Have there been situations when, in retrospect, God’s timing turned out to be just what you needed?

Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief… “If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.”

— Mark 6:4-6, 11

In the twenty years that I lived in Hollywood, I encountered many non-believers. Instead of waving a Bible in their face and telling them they were doomed to hell if they didn’t repent and accept Jesus, I listened to their reasons for rejecting God and religion. Most of them made excellent points. They were shocked when I told them I agreed with their reasons, and I tried to gently let them know that not all religions are oppressive and exclusive, and not all faith traditions portray God as angry and judgmental. I gradually began to realize that most people are completely unaware that they have choices in their spiritual journey and that they, like many of us, are longing to know there is a safe and loving place for them.

As followers of Christ, we are called to spread the Good News to all creation, but in these two passages, Jesus reminds us that we will sometimes encounter rejection. Jesus himself is rejected by the people in his own hometown. He then tells the disciples what to do if they go into a town and their teaching is rejected.

I am always amazed when I see people attempting to pound Jesus’ message angrily into non-believers. Any good teacher will tell you that this is not going to work. Jesus shows us here that if we try to share the Good News and encounter rejection, we simply move on. He gives us the example of a peaceful response to unbelief rather than an angry reaction.

Reflect: How have you successfully or unsuccessfully modeled your faith to non-believers?

The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.

— Mark 6:26-29

In the Gospel of Mark, the story of John the Baptist is told as a flashback to explain King Herod’s extreme reaction to the ministry of Jesus. We see the conflict within Herod as he tries to appease his subjects and his family while fighting his desire to tolerate John because he “feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him.” Herod caves in to the pressures around him, though, and orders John to be beheaded.

Our Community specifically chose John the Baptist as our patron because of his call to repent. The Community of St. John Baptist was formed in 1852 within an existing ministry that helped poor women transform their lives by gaining an education and acquiring valuable job skills.

When John called the people to repent, he was not asking them to cower and await punishment. Instead, this call for repentance comes from the Greek word metanoia, which roughly translates into a change of thinking or a turning around to a different point of view. John, our founders believed, was calling the world to change its thinking and to care for the poor, the marginalized and the oppressed. I appreciate that Episcopal Relief & Development’s approach focuses not on a top-down rescue but on strengthening the existing gifts and resources of local communities. In earlier times, both foreign and domestic missionary efforts sometimes imposed their own ideas rather than hearing the people’s needs. Superficial top-down rescue cannot heal deeply, but collaborative empowerment sparks real transformation.

Herod silenced the voice of John the Baptist, but he did not silence the message. John pointed the way to Jesus Christ, who continued to call on the world to turn away from greed and violence and embrace compassion and justice.

Reflect: Can you think of people who are carrying out John and Jesus’ call to repentance in our modern age?

Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.

— Mark 6:41-44

As a child, I used to wonder, “If Jesus could perform miracles and God has power over everything, why would he just… feed people?” Why, I wondered, didn’t he overthrow the Roman Empire? Why wouldn’t he bless the ground so that there would be an abundance of food every day? When I delved deeper into the symbolism of this story, I began to understand the importance of this miraculous feeding of the five thousand. In the story, Jesus looks at the crowd and has compassion for them because he sees that they are like sheep without a shepherd. He wants the crowd to stay so he can teach them, but his disciples tell him they need to disperse the crowds and move on, because there is nothing to feed them. It would be better, they say, to allow all these people to go somewhere else and get food. Jesus says, “You give them something to eat.” Then they begin asking questions about logistics. Jesus solves the problem by dividing the five loaves and two fish into enough for everyone.

The COVID pandemic closed down the world in March 2020, only three months after I had been elected Superior. We had to shut down our retreat house and our guest ministry, and the parishes where we worked were closed indefinitely. Without our guest ministry income and our outreach to the church, I was seized by a deep terror that our Convent would not survive or worse, that our Sisters vulnerable to respiratory illnesses might die. Nearly every day, I prayed to God, “Please help us.” The parish where I served stepped in and provided us with donated food from local grocery stores. Our friends and associates dug deep into their pockets and donated twice their usual amount. They also helped us learn how to do ministry online and reach more people than ever before. With God’s protection, we survived. None of our Sisters were lost to COVID, and we had a miraculously generous amount of food and support.

There are many meanings to this miracle, but my current understanding is that it means God always supplies enough for everyone. It is only through greed, war and injustice that people are made to starve. “You give them something to eat” is God’s message to us. There is always enough. We just need to devise a system in which everyone has all they need, and people step in to help.

Reflect: Where have you seen examples of corrupt systems that cause poverty and hunger? How can you play a role in forming a more just system?

And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

— Mark 6:56

In today’s reading, Jesus first walks on water, then, when the boat lands at Gennesaret, he begins healing the sick. He had gone up a mountain to pray, as his disciples went ahead to Bethsaida, but then nearly scared them to death by appearing to walk on water as the wind tossed their boat around.

My favorite part of this passage is “He intended to pass them by,” which evokes a hilarious image of Jesus strolling casually past the boat when the disciples see him and think he is a ghost. This story is a bit difficult to understand, and it unfolds in a somewhat comical way because the disciples are so human in their confused reaction. They remind me of all of us. I think we’d all react in much the same way as we tried to wrap our primitive, human minds around the incarnation of the Divine.

When the whole confused band of disciples arrives at Gennesaret with Jesus, great crowds bring people to him for healing. These people, too, do not fully understand who this miracle worker actually is. The idea that any man could be God, come to earth in human form, is just beyond them. To them, he is simply a human who can heal.

Reflect: When was a time in your life when you were truly surprised by God’s presence?

And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

— Mark 7:20-23

I have always considered this passage a perfect message for Lent. The Pharisees see Jesus’ disciples eating with unwashed hands, and Jesus replies to their rebukes by quoting Isaiah and telling them, “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” Jesus is not just bashing the Laws of the Jewish people here and being disobedient. He is talking about hypocrisy.

There are so many times in my daily life when I wish that people I encounter would “act better” or “do the right thing.” Jesus reminds me that I have no control over other people’s words and actions. I can only control my own words and actions by setting healthy boundaries and responding thoughtfully instead of reacting impulsively. I sometimes fall back on my old pattern of “Well, he made me mad,” or “She made me feel judged.” But then I remember that no one can make me feel anything. My feelings are based on my own thoughts and perceptions of what enters my heart from the outside. Transforming my reactions into healthy responses is something that happens deep within.

Jesus reminds us to avoid the hypocrisy of following the Law in a superficial manner. He tells us instead to follow God’s Law within our hearts and cleanse ourselves of inclinations toward destructive behaviors. The Pharisees’ judgment of people who don’t wash their hands is superficial compared to their uncharitable behavior. Many of Jesus’ followers were probably poor or lacked access to ritual cleansing vessels and clean water. The Pharisees would have done far better to help the poor in front of them rather than condemning them for breaking the Law.

Reflect: What are some ways that you have learned to transform destructive reactions into charitable responses?