Today’s readings challenge us all to take seriously our vocation to proclaim by our living the message that God’s love and mercy, God’s compassion and justice are for all of humankind, reflects Br Julian McDonald CFC. There is nothing to be gained by getting upset or vindictive when our efforts to share God’s message are ignored or not even noticed. What matters most is that what we say and do emanates from within. We leave the rest to God.

These days, both Jairus and the unnamed hemorrhaging woman in this week’s Gospel readings would be categorised as boundary violators, reflects Christian Brother Julian McDonald. Moreover, Jesus himself would fit into that category. He ignores the purity laws and brushes aside class and gender distinctions and rules, all for the sake of giving God’s love free passage into the lives of people in need.

The storm of today’s gospel-reading is a metaphor for the many storms we encounter in our lives, reflects Christian Brother Julian McDonald. But let’s not miss the opening sentences of that reading: “Late that day he said to them: “‘Let’s go across to the other side’. They took him in the boat as he was” (my emphasis). Those words prompt me to ask myself: “Am I ready, willing and able to meet Jesus as he is, rather than set about remodelling him as I would like him to be?” We all run the risk of wanting to attribute to God and to Jesus qualities that domesticate them and protect our comfort.

The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed? Surely, when Jesus told the crowds this parable, there must have been mutterings of “You’ve got to be joking!” and heads shaking in bewilderment, reflects Christian Brother Julian McDonald: “Mustard, the greatest of all shrubs???” After all, mustard bushes grew across the length and breadth of Palestine, and were regarded as a noxious weed. No farmer in his right mind would have sown mustard seed in his fields. But surely that’s the point. The growth of God’s kingdom is so unexpected and far-reaching that only God or someone close to God could dream it up. It will spread like wild-fire or, to mix the metaphors, like out-of-control mustard bushes. The joke is so outrageous that in Frederick Buechner’s words “it can only be God’s thing.”

In the early 5th Century, St Augustine reminded members of the Christian community of Hippo that, by sharing in the Eucharist, they became what they had received, and, consequently, were pledging themselves to be bread broken and wine poured out for others, writes Christian Brother Julian McDonald. To live Eucharist means taking on the responsibility of making the love of Christ visible to everyone we encounter. Every time we come together as community around the table of the Eucharist, we remind ourselves of who we are as disciples of Jesus Christ, and we come seeking from him and from one another the strength we need to live true to our responsibilities as followers of Jesus.