POWER

POWER
Homily for Tues of the 4th Wk in OT, 4 Feb 2025, Mk 5:21-43
The Gospel tells us Jesus felt power come out of him as soon as the woman with hemorrhage touched him and got healed. Let’s reflect today on POWER and what Mark is telling us about it in this double narrative with three main characters: Jairus, the woman with hemorrhage, and Jairus’ daughter.
Maybe because we are familiar with sayings like “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” our common notion of power tends to be negative. We tend to equate being powerful with being abusive or lording it over. And yet, today’s reading portrays Jesus to us as a man of power. Mark also calls him a man who not only “spoke with authority”, but also exercised authority over unclean spirits, and that people sought power from him.
It was a reflection of one of our guests at our last CBCP plenary assembly, Archbishop Giovanni Caesare Pagazzi of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education, that brought me to a better understanding of power. You see, we often don’t realize how much power we possess just by being alive, healthy, functional and productive, until we actually experience getting sick or disabled by age, accident, or disease. Some people cannot even feed, wash, or clothe themselves. Some are prevented from speaking, hearing, walking, working or even relating with others because of physical or mental disabilities that render them powerless or helpless. And those of us who are well often don’t realize how much we can do for others by just being there for them, until we get to hear profuse expressions of gratitude, such as from a former student to a teacher, or from a patient to a doctor who treated him or a nurse who cared for him, or a priest who had counselled him.
Of course we are familiar with people who seek power for the wrong reasons. Remember how Jesus had reprimanded James and John, when the two brothers sought to be positioned, one at his left and the other at his right? Jesus