"Creatures of the World Are Wholesome" (Wisdom 1: 13-15)

In today’s first reading, Wisdom 1: 13-15; 2: 23-24, the author says to us:  God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living. For he fashioned all things that they might have being; and the creatures of the world are wholesome, and there is not a destructive drug among them, nor any domain of the netherworld on earth, for justice is undying.

As I reflect on that passage,  I cannot help but think of my brothers and sisters in Christ who are lesbians, gays, transsexual and bisexual.  They are not, in my opinion , “a destructive drug” among us. No, they are “creatures of the world [who] are wholesome,” and who, like heterosexual persons,  fall in love with one another.  St. John says to us in 1 John: 10: “The man [or woman] who continues in the light is the one who loves his brother [or sister]; there is nothing in him [or her] to cause a fall. But the man [or woman] who hates his brother [or sister] is in darkness. He [or she] walks in shadows, not knowing where he [or she] is going, since the dark has blinded his [or her] eyes.”

God, the author of Wisdom, tells us, does not “rejoice in the destruction of the living.  Have I assumed attitudes, beliefs, that destroy other human beings who are different from me: whose sexual orientation, from birth, is different from mine; whose skin color is different from mine, whose culture is different from mine?  Am I living “in shadows”;  has “the dark…blinded [my] eyes”?  

In the Gospel, Mark 5: 21-43 Jesus heals the woman of a hemorrhage, touched the deceased little girl and tells her to get  up.  According to the law of Moses, both the woman and the deceased were considered unclean and untouchable and, if Jesus touched them, He, too was considered unclean.  Jesus ignores the law and brings life/healing to both the woman and the little girl.  In the early Church, Peter was told in a vision: “What God has purified you are not to call unclean” (Acts 10: 15). A law is challenged that the Jews clung to with heart and soul.  Laws are just laws made by humankind and, therefore, can be changed and will be changed as persons comes to different understandings not known when certain laws were created, as in the case, also, concerning the  the law of slavery, a law that St. Paul promoted in his writings.  The letter of the law kills, the spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:6). Are we holding on to laws that kill other human being’s hope, faith, love?