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| Touching His Cloak and Raising the Young Girl |
| Imagine
yourself in a large, crowded sports event trying to get toward the
exit. People are moving in the same direction, jostling along and
bumping into one another. A tap on the arm or tug on the sleeve goes
entirely unnoticed. |
| Imagine
Jesus in this same kind of a crowd with people pressing in upon him as
He walked along the shore of the sea. We can imagine the surprise of His
disciples when he stopped and remarked that someone had touched His
clothing. How in that crowd could He be aware of a touch? |
| Jesus
was aware of a touch that was out of the ordinary, a touch of faith by a
desperate woman. He stops to question, who touched me? He knew power
had gone out of Him and He had cured someone, but to Him it was not just
a face in the crowd, He had cured a person.
He had to meet her face to face, speak with her, reassure her, and
comfort her. The woman comes forward, she is fearful and starting to
tremble, she needs reassuring, needs kind words. She fell at the feet of
Jesus. Jesus simply tells her it is your faith that has cured you, go
in peace and be free of this illness. |
| According
to Jewish law, this woman was unclean because of her condition.
Therefore, anyone she touched would likewise be rendered unclean. Jesus
shows no concern for the ritual laws of purity, His only concern is for
her. “Your faith has cured you.” |
| We
also read about Jairus in today’s Gospel. He is an official of the
synagogue, part of the establishment. He would normally regard Jesus as
an outsider, a heretic, one to whom the synagogue doors would be closed
and if you valued your orthodoxy, you would avoid Him. It is not faith
that has brought him to Jesus, but desperation. His child was ill, so he
forgot his prejudices, his dignity and pride. He throws himself at the
feet of Jesus and begs, my daughter is dying, come and cure her. Then a
message comes, and he is told, “Your daughter has died.” |
| Jesus
tries to build his faith, He tells him, fear is useless, what is needed
is trust. Just as an aside, notice that the little girl is twelve years
old, and the bleeding woman has suffered the same twelve years. The
ruler calls his beloved child “daughter,” Jesus called the woman healed
of the bleeding “daughter,” but in both cases, Jesus touched someone who
was considered unclean. Their wholeness mattered more to Jesus than His
reputation. |
| Both
the official and the woman who touched Jesus were religious people.
Undoubtedly they had prayed to God to help them with their problems.
They must have asked themselves the same question that we ask every time
we do not understand what is going on in life: Why? Why pain and
suffering? Why does a little girl have to die? Pain and suffering
continue as part of everyone’s life, we all know this. We neither like
it nor fully understand it, especially when it happens to the innocent
and the good Why does God create a world in which we have to suffer and
die? |
| These
are not new questions. Thousands of years ago, the Jews asked the same
question and we read in the Book of Wisdom this morning, 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. Then it goes on to say, for God formed us to be
imperishable, in the image of His own nature He made us but by the envy
of the devil, death entered the world. |
| Evil
is not God’s doing, but ours because of our free will. The two people
in our Gospel today had no claim on Jesus, He did not owe them anything,
perhaps their faith came more from desperation than anything else and
yet they found His power and love waiting for them. |
| Just
prior to this episode Jesus had cured some blind men. They had called
out, “Jesus, Son of David, cure us.” The title “Son of David” was a
political one, so they had not understood who Jesus was at all, and yet
He cured them. |
| There
is a lesson here for us. It did not seem to matter how people came to
Christ, as long as they came. If we feel we cannot reach out to touch
Christ until our motives, our faith, and our theology are perfect, we
will never touch Him. We have to be like the woman and the leader of the
synagogue in the Gospel today. |
| Just
come as you are. Come with your sickness, both physical and moral, and
spiritual. It is not how we come to Christ that matters, rather it is
that we should come to the one who makes all things new. And just by a
touch, He is able to make us what we ought to be. |
| Whenever I read this Gospel passage, I think of the Broadway show, Cats and the song, Memory.
Words of that song could have been spoken by Jesus to both the woman
who touched him and the child, and in times of trials and tribulations,
He says them to us: “Touch me, just touch me and you will know what
happiness is. And a new day will begin.” |
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| Yours in Christ, |
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| Fr. Bob Warren, SA |
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P.S. Join with me and my fellow Friars of the Atonement for a wonderful devotion to the Blessed Mother. Please send us your prayer petitions for us to include as we celebrate a Special Mary, Undoer of Knots Novena from July 9th to July 17th. We are privileged to include your prayer petitions in this special devotion to Mary, Undoer of Knots. I pray you will see the spiritual knots be undone in your life!
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