THE MAID IS NOT DEAD, BUT SLEEPETH

A SERMON FOR THE 23RD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

During this month of November, we spend more time than usual thinking about death.  It’s the month of the Holy Souls, and our thoughts inevitably turn from them to ourselves, and to the fears we have about death and what happens to us after death.  Today, this 23^rd Sunday after Pentecost, the Church places before us a rather reassuring picture that should alleviate some of those fears, I hope.

I refer to the ruler who bows down before our Lord and, with a simple yet profound faith, after telling him that his daughter is dead, asks him to come and lay his hand upon her, “and,” he says, “she shall live.”  Our Lord does indeed raise his daughter from the dead, and the maid arose.  It’s a simple story, but one that should have enormous impact on our own faith, and its ability to dispel those fears of death that tend to surface more strongly at this time of year.

Death is not the end.  It wasn’t the end for the daughter of this good man, it wasn’t the end for Lazarus, and it wasn’t the end for our Blessed Lord himself.  After three days in the tomb, our Lord rose from the dead.  And so will we.  In fact, it won’t even take three days for our souls to rise from their bodily prison, free to join our Lord in eternal life.  Those bodies too will one day rise up to join our souls, incorruptible.  Death is not the end, merely a doorway through which we venture outside our comfort zone of knowledge and into the realm of faith.  We leave our bodily homes, not to be lost in the cold unknown, but into the warmth and heavenly light of the God who awaits us in heaven above.  

In the Epistle today, St. Paul warns us about certain enemies of the cross of Christ.  These are the men and women who “mind earthly things,” and not the things of God.  In fact, “their God is their belly,” they are more concerned with the satisfaction of their lower appetites, material things, than they are with their Creator and their Redeemer.  During the last century, there was a general turning away from God and towards the material things of life.  The result was the new Mass, the modernist overthrow of our Catholic hierarchy, and the eclipse of the faith within the Church.  So that now, it looks rather like the Church herself is dead.

In a certain sense, she is dead.  But then, as we have noted, so was Christ himself.  And we saw what happened next.  And this is my point today, that no matter how dead the Church may appear, no matter what modernist and heretical garbage spews from the mouths of its leaders, no matter how many Catholic schools and hospitals and convents may close, how many churches may be desecrated and even pulled down—The Church, the Bride of Christ will one day rise again from the dead.  One day, we will realize that “the maid is not dead, but sleepeth.”  And our blessed Saviour will take her by the hand, and the maid shall arise.

It may happen in our lifetime, it may happen in ten thousand years, but one way or another, it shall happen because the Church is indefectible.  That means she can never die eternally.  Even if we have to wait until the end of time itself, when Christ himself returns to reclaim Creation, his Mystical Body will rise up to meet him, as it says in the Gospels: “For the Lord himself shall come down from heaven with a shout, and with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God: and the dead who are in Christ, shall rise first.”  The dead who are in Christ… If the Church is still “dead” when Christ shall come to judge the world by fire, then surely this Church, Christ’s Bride, shall be the very first of all.

Meanwhile, we should continue to pray that God’s kingdom come, and that his will be done.  We must pray constantly, with faith, for the resurrection of the Church, just as the ruler in today’s Gospel calmly asks our Lord to come and lay his hand upon her, “and she shall live.”  We should have the same faith as the woman diseased with an issue of blood, reaching out to our divine Saviour, knowing that if we can but touch his garment, we shall be whole.  Not because the hem of Christ’s garment has magical powers, but because our act of faith in God is a prayer that he is always ready to answer.  Let us live for the day when we hear those same blessed words coming from our Saviour’s mouth, “Be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole.”  And the woman was made whole from that hour.  There is no doubt that, if we pray enough, so too shall our Church be made whole again.