In the Gospel for this weekend, a man named Jairus approached Jesus and asked Him to heal his daughter who was about to die. When Jesus got to the girl, the people said she had already died. Jesus said not to worry because she was just sleeping, and then He called on the girl to arise.
How many of us are going through life spiritually asleep? We say our prayers and go to church, but are we really making an effort to improve our relationship with Jesus? When it’s my time to die, I want to have grown so close to Jesus, that I can almost see Him next to me. We should all carry Jesus within us to help the world know Him better and we should also try to see Jesus in others. We look at people differently when we can see Jesus in others. We don’t look at them anymore with lust, anger, or disgust, but only with love.
Life is full of distractions. We can get distracted just as easily with the bad things that happen to us as we can with the good things. We should always find a way to use our suffering to grow stronger spiritually. Jesus had a tough and painful road to Calvary, and if we are to follow in His footsteps, we should expect to endure suffering as well. There’s a song that my kids used to listen to that says, “Oh, you can’t get to Heaven in a rocking chair.” We need to always be walking towards God and not sitting in one place spiritually. Satan is constantly looking to pull us away from God so we need to always be moving towards God to counteract this pull from Satan. However, sometimes we need to seek help before we are able to move towards Heaven.
If we get caught in a rip current in the ocean, we should call out for help, stay afloat, and swim parallel to the shore until we escape the current. If we try to fight the current and head straight toward the shore, we will get exhausted and likely lose our life. The same is true when we are getting spiritually carried away from Heaven due to sin and temptation. Before we can head towards Heaven, we should call out for help and seek out forgiveness through the sacrament of reconciliation. Once we escape the rip current of sin and are no longer drifting from God, we can then begin to head towards God.
I can confidently say that most people want to go to Heaven. We all have good intentions, but we don’t always follow through with them. It’s not the end of the world if I’m lazy one day and don’t get all that I want to get done accomplished. However, it would be a tragedy if I slack off too much spiritually and don’t get to spend eternity with God and all my loved ones. So let’s not get spiritually lazy. Arise and always move towards a closer relationship with God.
