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Bishop Banda’s Homily, Tuesday, 4th Week, Year 2

Bishop Banda’s Homily, Tuesday, 4th Week, Year 2

Our readings today call to mind the frailty of our life and the pain that we must go through from time to time. Our first reading reveals the loving attachment between parent and child. Even though Absalom rebelled against his father David, yet when he was killed, David wept openly for him.

David grieves for his son, even though his son had sought after his life. “My son Absalom. Oh Absalom, my son. If only I had died instead of you, Absalom, my son, my son.” The mercy and love of a parent over his child is so overwhelming and superabundance. Regardless, a parent never forsakes a child. The Bemba adage has it: “Nangombe pa bana taya”.

The bonds and frailty of human life appear again in the gospel account. The woman with a hemorrhage for twelve years sought after cure, submitting herself to treatments of every kind. After having “exhausted all her savings in the process,” she turned to Jesus – “If only I could touch the flings of His clothes”. Equally Jairus, the synagogue official, in his anxiety for the health of her daughter asks Jesus to come and simply lay a hand on his sick little daughter.

Our readings help us to understand that no matter how much we may have rebelled against God and no matter how far we may have turned away from Him, God still loves us. He searches for us personally or by proxy (through other people, events, nature etc.) so that we too may return to Him and be healed. God wants to heal us of our physical ailments and to restore our health. He wants to heal our spiritual illness and cleanse our hearts of sin so that we too can truly live in freedom as children of God.

Jesus came to save us and to restore our life in God. Let us therefore turn to Him in faith and humility with all our hurts, burdens, anxieties, fears and indeed our shortcomings. He will not disappoint us. He will not leave us go empty handed. He will heal and forgive from both physical and spiritual ailments and make us anew.

God grieves to see us suffer, in pain, despair, fear, anxiety etc. He stretches out His hand and says “arise” and “eat”. Let us then arise and approach the Eucharistic banquet for our spiritual nourishment for the “journey”, to our heavenly homeland.

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