My dear brothers and sisters, we live in the secularized world. The secular people don't often talk about the devil, and when we do, it's usually to make a joke. But Jesus didn't just make jokes about the devil.
In fact, the Bible tells us that undoing the devil's work was the primary reason Jesus came to earth in the first place: "This was the purpose of the appearing of the Son of God, to undo the work of the devil" (1 John 3:8).
The reading from the book of Wisdom explains why the devil is so important for human history: it was "by the envy of the devil [that] death entered the world." This happened in the Garden of Eden, with original sin. When our first parents let themselves be deceived by the devil, stopped trusting in God, and disobeyed God's command, the original harmony that God had built into creation was shattered. Evil, death, and suffering flooded the world. And ever since then, human history, both of the human race, and of every individual, has been a battleground between those destructive forces of evil, sin and selfishness, and the redeeming power of God's grace.
This is the truth, revealed by Christ, and fairly obvious to anyone who takes an honest look at the world. But if it's true and obvious, why does today's secularized world shy away from talking about it?
Part of the answer is simple: if we admit the reality of the devil and original sin, we are also admitting the fact that we, as fallen human beings, are in need of a Savior, someone stronger than evil and death who can come and redeem us. But admitting our need for a Savior takes humility, and humility scares us. We much prefer to see ourselves as self-sufficient, heroic, successful, and capable of taking care of ourselves, thank you very much.
But unless we are humble, admitting that we are not God, that we need God, then God's grace will not be able to touch and transform our lives, because God is too respectful of our freedom to force down the door of our hearts.
Humility Unleashes Healing
Today's Gospel passage illustrates this perfectly. Jesus performs two shocking miracles, and in both cases, the key that released the power of his grace was humility. Jairus, the synagogue official was humble: he knew that saving his daughter was something beyond his own powers.
This is clearly demonstrated by how he approaches Jesus. When he made his way into the Lord's presence, he wasn't aloof, sceptical, and argumentative, like so many Pharisees and Sadducees. Instead, St Mark tells us that he "fell at his [Jesus'] feet and pleaded earnestly with him."
The synagogue official was an important person in the city. He was used to being in charge, used to having the right answers and helping other people solve their problems. But faced with the mortal sickness of his child, Jairus remembered that there was a higher power in the universe than him, and he humbled himself before the Lord, and the Lord "went off with him" to work a miracle.
The woman with the haemorrhage was humble too; her sickness had made her so. She was not a powerful leader in society. In fact, her sickness made her an outcast. She was "unclean," according to the Mosaic Law. And she was risking her very life by fighting her way through the crowd, touching all those people, and making them unclean too.
Where did she get the strength to overcome those obstacles? From her humility. For twelve years she had been seeking a solution to her chronic, humiliating, and debilitating health issue, paying for all the latest technology and all the most highly recommended doctors. And so, she discovered the vast limits of human ingenuity, and turned instead to the limitless mercy of a much higher power. She risked everything just to touch a tassel of the Lord's cloak; and strength far beyond her limited human powers flowed out from him and healed her.
The humility of these two unforgettable Gospel characters opened their hearts to faith in Jesus Christ. And faith unleashed God's saving power in their lives. And God's saving power healed their hopelessness, strengthened their weakness, and enlightened their darkness.
Giving to Others as God Has Given to Us
Humility is the only door through which God's grace can reach our hearts and set us on the path of true happiness. This leaves us, logically speaking, with a question: What can we do to increase our humility?
St Paul gives us one possibility in today's Second Reading. In this Letter, he is encouraging the Christians in the prosperous Greek city of Corinth to be generous in helping the Christians in Jerusalem, who are suffering from a severe economic downturn. He points out that sharing with others the gifts we have received from God's providence is one way we can follow Christ more closely.
Jesus, in fact, was the first one who took the privileges he had received from the Father and surrendered them by becoming a man in the Incarnation. And by lowering himself in that way, he made it possible for us to share in those privileges, to become real children of God.
This is what St Paul is referring to when he writes: "... though he [Christ] was rich, for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich." Christ, the eternal, divine Son of God, coming down from heaven and raising us up to share in his divinity is the perfect model of humility.
We can follow his example by reaching out to others just as he has reached out to us. Visiting the sick and imprisoned, feeding the hungry, praying for sinners, encouraging the discouraged, comforting the troubled, inviting sinners to repent...
By "gracious actions" like these (as St Paul calls them) we reproduce in our souls the humility that Christ taught us. And doing that opens the door for his transforming grace to come and make us into the wise, joyful, courageous, and fruitful saints that we were created to be.