There was a fish in my aquarium that was a pretty sickly looking thing.  It’s not easy as a fish owner to watch a fish be sick.  Their faces sag, their fins collapse, they just look….afflicted and deadly.

I wonder if God doesn’t get sad in looking at us that way, too.  Which is why he offers us salvation.  Salvation isn’t just about one day getting to heaven if we’ve been faithful (though it is that, too), but the word comes from the Latin salus, meaning health, well-being.

God wants that we be healthy …. in mind, body, spirit.

And Jesus is alive and giving us this salvation daily!  As 2 Corinthians says, Now is the day of salvation!  God is saving us all the time….

But we gotta do our part!

We need only go into his presence and ask for this salus, this salvation (we all need it folks)!!!  Especially His Eucharistc presence (ADORATION).  JESUS LIVES people!  In our gospel today, 2 very afflicted people went to Jesus.  They got on their knees, wept and wailed, and they prayed with every fiber of their spirits.  They prayed with all they had in the presence of Jesus.

And he delivered.

Our prayer in front of Jesus–who is TRULY PRESENT in the Blessed Sacrament–has to be that sincere, that powerful, that meaningful.  Sometimes we are just too comfortable in our prayer….we pray, not really believing Jesus will or CAN do anything about it.

And far too many people don’t have the time to go to adoration in the first place.  Pathetic!  Jesus is truly and beautifully and powerfully present in Adoration…..Jesus is alive in that monstrance, happy to work the same miracles he works in our Gospel with Jairus’ daughter and the woman with the hemorrhages…..but too many people don’t have the time of day for Him.

I’ll never get it.

We go to Jesus!  Just like these two folks in our Gospel!  And we go with GREAT faith, GREAT love, GREAT joy…………………………………….and we wait for Jesus to give us whatever miracles he has up his sleeves

I hope that the adoration sheet for this First Friday in the back of church is completely filled after this Mass  [update after Masses: it was not completely filled. Several empty slots. Sigh.]

May God strengthen our faith and prayer today. Amen.