“Best Friends Forever”
Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Wis 1:13-15, 2:23-24; 2 Cor 8:7, 9, 13-15; Mk 5:21-43
June 30, 2024
Shrine of the Little Flowe
(Pollinator Garden at St. Francis of Assisi Church, Baltimore, MD. Photo: Evan Ponton)
Do you have a BFF, a best friend forever? Last Sunday at “Bee Disciples Bee Fest,” our summer family faith formation, the Master Gardener of Baltimore City explained how honeybees and flowers are “Bee-F-Fs,” best friends forever. They live together by sharing and helping each other in a beneficial relationship called pollination. The honeybee goes in search for food—nectar and pollen. Differently colored scented flowers entice the honeybee to land on its petals. When the bee enters the flower, the part of the flower called the stamen, pollen goes out and attaches to tiny hairs on the bee. The honeybee says goodbye then flies away to make another flower friend. The pollen from the first flower rubs off onto the part called the pistil to produce seeds, new life! “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living. For he fashioned all things that they might have being; and the creatures of the world are wholesome” (Wis 1:13-14).
Jesus is a busy bee on a mission to become best friends forever by pollinating people in order to help his creation live and grow, “For God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature” (Wis 2:23).
A synagogue official named Jairus makes a beeline to Jesus,
“My daughter is at the point of death. Please, come lay your hands on her that she may get well and live” (Mk 5:23).
Jesus buzzes off with him.
Along the way he meets “a woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years. She had suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors and had spent all that she had. Yet she was not helped but only grew worse.” Jesus, she heard, is the flower of God who holds the healing nectar she needs. “If I but touch his stamen, I shall be cured.”
“Immediately her flow of blood dried up. She felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. Jesus, aware at once that pollen had gone out from him, turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who has touched my stamen?”
“The woman, realizing what had happened to her, approached in fear and trembling. She fell down before Jesus and told him the whole truth.
He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction.”
Jesus then arrives at the daughter of Jairus who has died.
“Disregarding the message that was reported, Jesus said to the synagogue official, ‘Do not be afraid; just have faith” (Mk 5:36).
“He took the child by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha koum,’ which means, ‘Little girl, I say to you arise!’” The wilted, dead flower revives. Then he gave her something to eat.
Mark’s gospel sometimes breaks the story in two parts that biblical scholars like to call a “Markan Sandwich.” My own scientific hypothesis is that Jesus cross-pollinates the daughter of Jairus with the faith of the hemorrhaging woman. Jesus shows himself the King Bee, the Tree of Life, the Master Gardener, renewing the world flower by flower with little gracious acts of love.
Salvation is symbiotic. Faith cross-pollinates peoples. The regeneration of the world is interconnected; my flourishing depends on yours and yours on mine. Pope Francis calls this vision of life an “integral ecology.”[1] There is no salvation outside the garden of God, the Church of the heavenly Jerusalem, watered by the rivers of Baptism, the nectar of Eucharist, the healing leaves of reconciliation, where “justice is undying” (Wis 1:15).
This is “the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 8:9) who became our best friend forever by becoming like us, little, vulnerable, equal to us in all things but Sin.
“Though he was rich with honey, for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9).
This is also the story of a little girl named Therese from Lisieux, France, born and raised in a family of faith, especially her parents, Zellie and Louis Martin, whose example helped germinate the seed of her vocation in the soil of sickness and suffering. In her memoir, Therese remembers the conversation when she tells her father, Louis, on a walk together she wants to become a Carmelite nun.
“Going up to a low wall, he pointed to some little white flowers, like lilies in miniature, and plucking one of them, he gave it to me, explaining the care with which God brought it into being and preserved it to that very day.
While I listened I believed I was hearing my own story, so great was the resemblance between what Jesus had done for the little flower and little Therese. I accepted it as a relic and noticed that, in gathering it, Papa had pulled all its roots out without breaking them. It seemed destined to live on in another soil more fertile than the tender moss where it had spent its first days.”[2]
Like our parish patron, the Shrine of the Little Flower is being uprooted but we are not broken. You are destined for fertile ground. Jesus can bring a flower back to life. Do you not believe he do can the same with you, with our church? Do you have faith enough to go pollinate the next little flower?
Therese writes, “God has no need for anyone to carry out His work, I know, but just as He allows a clever gardener to raise rare and delicate plants, giving him the necessary knowledge for this while reserving to Himself the care of making them fruitful, so Jesus wills to be helped in His divine cultivation of souls.”[3] Jesus, the Master Gardener, entices you and me into the garden to make disciples. We can help by bringing our faith and cooperation, or, like the doctors in the gospel, we can make it worse with envy and resentment.
With her final words of Story of a Soul, St. Therese of Lisieux wonders,
“How will this ‘story of a little white flower’ come to an end? Perhaps the little flower will be plucked in her youthful freshness or else transplanted to other shores. I don’t know, but what I am certain about is that God’s mercy will accompany her always, that it will never cease blessing the dear Mother who offered her to Jesus; she will rejoice eternally at being one of the flowers of her crown. And with this dear Mother she will sing eternally the new canticle of Love.”[4]
What will be the story of your soul?
[1] See Pope Francis, Laudato ‘Si (On Care of Our Common Home), Chapter Four (n. 137-162) <https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html> An important theological project may involve developing a more integral ecclesiology, a vision for healthy, diverse, and symbiotic “ecology of the church.”
[2] Therese, Story of a Soul, 108.
[3] Therese, Story of a Soul, 113.
[4] Therese, Story of a Soul, 181-82.
Beautiful !