“Maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished.”

Perhaps William Faulkner’s line from the novel "Absalom, Absalom" unsettles the assumption that death is an absolute end, opening a space where interruption is possible?

In today’s Gospel reading from Mark, Jesus enters that very space, refusing the finality pronounced over Jairus’s daughter and calling her back to life. What the mourners see as finished, Christ names as sleep, revealing a God for whom endings are never beyond recall.

Absalom, son of King David, was beloved for his beauty and charisma, yet consumed by grievance and ambition.

He rebelled against his father, seizing the hearts of the people and forcing David into exile, turning familial love into tragic warfare.

When Absalom died, caught helplessly between heaven and earth, David’s anguished cry revealed a grief deeper than kingship: love unable to save what it most cherished.

Saint Blaise was a physician and bishop, known for healing both bodies and souls through prayer and mercy.

Remembered especially for saving a child from choking, he became a sign of God’s care in moments when breath and life hang in the balance.

His martyrdom sealed a witness that faith does not merely preserve life, but entrusts it wholly to God even unto death.

A sermon by Kevin Connell, S.J.