If you look carefully at today’s first reading, you see a word that will lead people to stop and reread it many times if they understand the significance of the term. Solomon in his Book of Wisdom explains that God has fashioned all things that they might have being. That is a profound statement that we can easily pass over without recognizing its earth-shattering significance.Being is a profound term that can be defined simply as existence but it goes deeper than that. He is the source of your being. You exist because of God.One of the principles I teach to the confirmation students is that if God is light and you walk away from God where do you go? You go into darkness because that is the only place you can go when you walk away from light.

Now Solomon teaches us an ancient principle that is a part of our faith that God is the source of being. If we walk away from God where do we go, where there is no existence, where there is no life. That alone is the alternative.

When you are rooted in God, you are rooted in life, when you reject God, you are not rooted in the source of life but what is left is not life. If God is the source of being, then what is left cannot simultaneously be its only source. It cannot bring you anywhere but away from the fullness of what the Father created you to be.

God alone is the source of life. You, without God, cannot bring life. You can bring life from life, but once there is no life, you cannot bring life, for you are not the source of life only God is.

If you have fire for example on a candle, you can spread the fire to another candle, but once the fire goes out, you need to find a source. No source, no fire.

God is the only source of being which is the reality of life. There is no other.

See how this plays out in the Gospel. Notice the woman spent all her money seeking a cure, but only touched Jesus’ cloak and she was healed. Why? The doctors may have some form of education, intelligence and experience, but Jesus alone is the source of being and He alone could heal her.

When Jesus visits the dead girl, He is laughed at when He says she is only sleeping. They laugh at her because they know she is dead and indeed she is dead. She cannot be healed, except by the source of being, who is Christ. He is the one who brings life and He heals where others cannot. He is the one source of life.

There are no other options for there are no others who are the source of being. We hear today about the culture of death, but what is it? It is first a culture that rejects God and when your culture rejects God it rejects the one source of life. There is no alternative but to spiral down away from what brings life. The Bible maps down the way of the spiral It begins with rejecting God and ends in chaos. However, the culture is not only one that moves towards death, but rejects God. God is the source of life, so the culture cannot promote growth towards life, but only away from it. Such a culture promotes division and chaos because, outside of the source of all being, life is available only in limited supply and therefore one will find life only at the expense of others. This is the greatest issue with a culture that rejects God, it breeds division and a separation at the expense of one group for the benefit of the other.

Here is an interesting question for you: Do we promote a community filled with life? We do not if we do not lead others to the one source of life. Remember, if you are not in touch with the source of life then you have no other source to find it. Look around you and see how many do not take to heart what we do here. We know that because they are not here. They choose an alternative, but, there is none. There is only the one source of life. When we accept the idea that they do not have to take their relationship with God seriously, then we promote the idea that there are options. There are none. This is most seriously addressed with the youth.

God alone is the source of their being and ours and our lack in reaching out to the youth outside of religious education, our lack reaching out to those not attending mass is communicating something false, that there is another source of being, of life. There is none.

Jesus heals where no one can because He is the source of Being. Our Catholic faith can transform like no other community can because our Eucharist is the body and blood of the source of all being that is Jesus Christ.

There are no other options in which we can find life. Let us recognize that, live that and embrace that. Let us draw others to the source of all being and embrace the one who leads us to life, Jesus Christ. It is then we are proclaiming with Jesus that the Kingdom of God is at hand, that Kingdom is recognized by its fruit, life to full: true being.