THE CHILD IS NOT DEAD, BUT ASLEEP

XIII SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - Mk 5:21-43

The reality of death scares us and brings endless questions into our minds. There are people who take their own lives out of despair, thinking life is unworthy of living. They reached the end of the road, feeling life as being oppressive and meaningless. Suicide always brings sorrow and inflicts pain on friends and relatives, who lost their beloved one. And a very simple but pertinent question comes to everybody’s mind: Why? Without an adequate answer, the question is repeated time and again: Why? Why?

People value life so much that they do everything to keep and prolong it. And we can find great numbers of people who, in spite of being in great suffering, want to go on living, considering life as the most precious gift. Human beings dream with eternal life and, in general, refuse to accept life as the end of their identity - an end filled with emptiness. 

The gospels help us to see Jesus’ reaction before death. Facing his own death, his heart was filled with anguish and terror, which afflicted him so much that “his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground” (Lk 32:44). And he was so touched by the death of his friend Lazarus, that he cried (Jn 11:35). In this Sunday’s gospel, we see Jesus consoling the parents of a little girl, telling them that their daughter is just sleeping (Mk 5 :39). Jesus compares that to sleep, from which one will awake and rise to new life.

However, the questions caused by death are never fully answered. People never fully accept death. In Zambian traditional culture, there is no natural death, meaning that one does not die, but is killed, and the relatives of the deceased look for the killer, so that they may punish him/ her. God is never blamed for someone’s death. Instead, death is attributed to the jealousy, envy and hatred of someone, be it a neighbour or a member of the family. This search for the killer brings quarrels and divisions within the family and the community, making an outcast of the one found guilty of someone’s death. In this search for the killer, many injustices are committed and many innocent people are punished.

People need to find explanations for whatever happens, even if they are not true. They need an answer for the question: where does death come from?

It is interesting that the book of Wisdom tries to answer the same question. Like our traditional culture, it does not blame God:

“God did not make death,

and he does not delight in the death of the living.” (Wisd 1:13)

The book of wisdom attributes death to the devil: 

“through the devil’s envy death entered the world,

and those who belong to his company experience it” (Wisd 2:24)

Death is a natural phenomenon. Being created, we are mortal. Everything that has a beginning will have an end, being continuously moving towards decay. Only God is the One who is, who was and who will be. However, by God’s gift of love, we are called to eternity, and the call is expressed in our deep desire for immortality. 

If we live in God’s love and are certain of his saving love, then death should be like going into to sleep, so that we will rise to the new dawn in God’s Kingdom. Through the pain of death, we are born to the New Life in Christ.