Today’s Scripture readings speak of the gracious act of Our Lord, and of the envy of the devil. Graciousness and envy couldn’t be further apart as attitudes, as strategies, as choices, and as the motive and power to act. Scripture bears witness to the fact that one brings life, the other death.
This is true at any given moment in our lives, and it is equally and perhaps more importantly true across the span of our lives. It can happen that someone might be moved quite unexpectedly to be or act graciously, but this is rare. More likely, a moment of gracious action is the product of a life live in this attitude. So too, envy will be “soft” and easily redeemed if it is out of character, while envy that drives and alienates is more likely accumulated over time.
“Why this commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but asleep.” “And they ridiculed him.”
It is easy to see “on the face of it” why the crowd gathered at the home of Jairus in today’s Gospel would ridicule him. And there definitely was a strain of suspicion and fear regarding this man from Nazareth, realities which Jesus would encounter right up to the time of his Cross.
But, with rare exceptions of frustration or anger at given moments, in the company of his disciples, or within the precincts of the Temple, the gracious action of God on our behalf remained his motive and his power. The envy, jealousy, anger and ultimate betrayal the world had to offer did not sway Jesus from this mission in and for the world: to bear witness to the Truth, and to address that Truth to the sick and the broken, to the sinner and the arrogant, to the dying and those who had died. All in all, the gracious act of God is life, to live, and to share that Truth with all who accept it!