Do you remember last Sunday’s Gospel Lesson?  The boat incident?  When the disciples were caught in a storm on open water and became upset with Jesus for sleeping and not helping them to keep the boat they were in from sinking?  Do you remember how, after Jesus was roughly shaken awake and had stilled the wind and calmed the water; . . . do you remember how Jesus asked His disciples, “Why are you afraid?  Have you no faith?”  Jesus doesn’t ask them why they were afraid, as if their fear were a momentary condition.  . . . Jesus asks the men who claim to be His disciples; . . . Jesus asks them why is their thinking controlled by fear; . . . Jesus wonders why a disciple’s life would not be governed by Faith.

    Well, here again, in today’s Gospel Lesson, we have the same thing.  Jairus, who has come to Jesus on behalf of his sick daughter; . . . Jairus receives a message from home:  “Your daughter is dead.  Leave the nice man alone and come bury her.”   . . . But Jesus resists the authority of this message . . . and says to Jairus, “Do not fear, only believe.”  It is the same thing Jesus says to His disciples in the boat(!):  Do not be controlled by fear, . . . but be governed by Faith.

    This twice repeated teaching suggests that Saint Mark has learned something from Jesus which he considers tremendously important for all of us, who are also disciples of Jesus; . . . Saint Mark has learned something from Jesus which he considers tremendously important for us to understand, . . . and appropriate, . . . and live.  As far as understanding what Jesus has to teach us in these two events Mark tells us about, . . . I think Saint Thomas Aquinas can be of some help.  You see, Saint Thomas says that there are four cardinal virtues.  The word “cardinal” comes from the Latin word cardo, meaning “hinge”.  And so, Saint Thomas Aquinas tells us that God, in creating us, has given us four hinges upon which all of the natural human life hangs or “depends”, and by which all of the natural human life swings freely and operates properly.  These four cardinal virtues are:  Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude.  These four cardinal virtues cause reason to govern human behavior; . . . the purpose of God for incorporating these four cardinal virtues into our human nature is so that we are not governed by animal emotions . . . but by reason.  And it is Fortitude which overcomes the animal emotion of fear.  Fear, you see; . . . fear corrupts human beings and human society.  Fear corrupts us because fear is governed by irrational self-interest in the face of difficulties or dangers.  Look at the crowd gathered at the house of Jairus.  They make a great show of loud weeping and wailing; . . . but when Jesus speaks hope to them -- “The child is not dead but sleeping” -- they laugh at Jesus.  How can those people go from grief to laughter so quickly?  That kind of behavior is irrational.  Well, the crowd laughs at Jesus because they are not grieving at all, but making a big show of it.  In fact, their hearts are glad.  Their hearts are glad because misfortune has fallen on someone else!  The grief of the crowd is an irrational, superstitious, corrupt and selfish grief; . . . it is a show of grief intended to ward off some personal misfortune of which each mourner is afraid.  Fear corrupts human beings and human society, because fear evokes self-absorption.  On the other hand, Fortitude consists of coming out of yourself; . . . Fortitude consists of reasonably enduring or resisting the difficulties and dangers which threaten the human community.

    Now, where else have we encountered this kind of “brave” activity?  Well, Moses speaks of Fortitude in the Old Testament Lesson appointed for today!

Take heed [Moses says]; . . . Take heed lest there be a base thought in your heart, and you say, “The seventh year, the year of release is near [when all debts are forgiven],” and your eye be hostile to your poor brother, and you give him nothing, and he cry to the Lord against you, and it be sin in you.

The generosity of God’s Holy Law calls us to come out of ourselves.  In the case of today’s Old Testament Lesson, God’s Holy Law exhorts us to practice the human virtue of Fortitude; . . . today’s Old Testament Lesson exhorts us not to be afraid of poverty; . . . today’s Old Testament Lesson exhorts us to be brave in the face of human need; . . . to lavish food upon the poor when it is your turn to supply the Food Pantry; . . . to put a dollar in the Alms Box whenever you come into the Church; . . . to lavish your time upon the poor by helping out in the Magic Closet; … to be a disciple of Jesus who bravely ministers without measuring the cost or expecting to get something back.  . . . Because Moses says, “for this [for your Fortitude]; for this the Lord your God will bless you.”

    I once attended a lecture by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross (the physician who has made a study of death and dying), . . . and in that lecture she said that psychological research has shown that a true human emotion (an emotion such as fear); . . . a true emotion lasts no longer than twenty seconds.  If the emotion lasts any longer -- if a person is afraid for more than twenty seconds -- then they are dwelling upon the experience of the emotion itself; . . . in other words, they have become self-absorbed.  . . . And there you have scientific verification of what the Incarnate Son of God, by Whom all things were made; . . . you have scientific verification of what Jesus explained to us two thousand years ago:  that to be controlled by fear is self-absorption.  In fact, both Gospel accounts -- last Sunday’s and today’s -- are practical illustrations of what Jesus says axiomatically elsewhere in the Gospels:  “Whoever would be my disciple [Jesus says]; . . . whoever would be my disciple must leave self behind . . .”; must abandon self-absorption . . . and live with generosity.  . . . Holy Scripture teaches us that the habit of human virtue; . . . the habit of Fortitude, of being brave; . . . the habit of Fortitude makes us available to the Lord our God so that He can bless us; . . . so that He can infuse each of us, who lives bravely, with  the divine grace of Faith, . . . so that we might come out of ourselves entirely . . . and live with heart and soul and mind fixed upon God . . . and so think and speak and act accordingly.

    So, we have before us today an essential threefold element of your individual spiritual life:  the habitual practice of the human virtue of Fortitude, training us to come out of ourselves, . . . which overcomes self-absorption and makes us generous, . . . which conditions us, in turn, to live according to the divine virtue of Faith, . . . of listening for Jesus.  For, when you are controlled by Fortitude and generosity as they are perfected by Faith, . . . well . . . then miracles happen; for, by the human virtue of Fortitude and the divine virtue of Faith, the miraculous, life-giving Word to Whom even the wind and sea are obedient -- Jesus Himself -- comes to you in many circumstances and in many ways . . . and says, “Talitha, cumi” . . . “Little child, . . . arise!”