No Rock-Bottom

Monday at daily mass, the Gospel was a short reading from the short gospel (Mark). The little narrative shares how when Jesus and the disciples came ashore to tie up their boat and disembark, people came swarming in to him with the sick and crippled on their mats, seeking the cures and healing that Jesus could work.

The final line of the Gospel is a really cool concluding thought, one that lets the message from Mark kind of float there in the air for a moment before "The Gospel of the Lord": "[They] begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak; and as many as touched it were healed" (Mark 6:56).

The power of Jesus was so strong that simply touching Him could cure the sick. Jesus brought so much more than just cures of disease and healing of infirmities, but the practicality of such tangible aid was so appealing to these people.

They did not ask for great truth or knowledge or make Jesus stay with them; they just wanted healing for their friends and family who were afflicted. They could access the awesome power of God just by touching Jesus' cloak.

So, too, for us. Jesus is not walking our streets in His Incarnate human form. But He is with us in the Word and especially in the Eucharist. Our access to God is incredible through Christ.

If we only reach out to get the slightest touch of His cloak, we find healing and peace. The kinds of sickness and affliction of Jesus' time don't exist in exactly the same way today, but the efficacy of Jesus' saving power in His ministry, Passion, death, and Resurrection is the same today. We need only touch the tassel of his cloak--enter into the beginnings of a deeper relationship and faith in Him--to find healing.

From there, we continue to try and journey on deeper, getting a taste of the goodness of God and seeking more of it. And the beauty is that faith in God is the even keel that underwrites all that we do.

Establishing yourself on a solid foundation of faith raises your zero point so much higher. If you imagine your life as a line graph with 0 being the worst of times and 10 being the best, even slight faith in God will block out the bottom-most parts of that graph.

Faith in God through Christ is the foundation for our life being so much better and fuller. As your faith grows and deepens, it's as if the whole section from 0-3 or 0-6 or even more becomes impenetrable because your faith doesn't allow you to dip that low. God brings you the confidence and hope to always remain above that.

Faith and hope in Christ eliminates those kinds of doldrums and transforms your life flow into something that is deeper and steadier, not in the sense of monotony but in strengthening you and steering you clear of severe kinds of despair and hopelessness.

With faith in Christ, rock-bottom gets eliminated. You can only go as low as let go of that faith. Christ is the one who guarantees our happiness through faith in Him, and His gift of hope in salvation and eternal life with God underwrites our lives and fills that upper level of happiness and joy with His love.