Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The psalm that was sung helps me a lot today. The refrain said: I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me. This is very profound. It is not to praise God because you are good, or because you come to Mass every week or because your parents were such good Catholics. The psalm implies that you cannot praise the Lord until you have been rescued. You can’t bless the Lord or give him glory if he has not delivered you from something. What did he save you from? It is super important to see it clearly. If we don’t know what it is, then we would sing this psalm like parrots or it would be forced because we don’t know what we have been freed from.
Did he free you from selfishness, from lust, from vanity, from always doing what you want? If he has not freed you from something, they you cannot be a Christian. Without a God who saved you, how can you rejoice? The people of Israel have a God who acts, and God said to Moses in the burning bush: I am who I am, meaning I am a God who is, who acts. He tells Moses, you will see it; I will manifest myself to you by what I do. The Israelites experienced the passage through the Red Sea from slavery to freedom. Then God makes a covenant with them: I will be your God and you will be my people. The covenant of the Lord will be made with you when the people pass from Egypt to the Promised Land and not before. The covenant was only made when he freed them from slavery. If you have not been freed from something, then you don’t have God or you have other gods. What gods do you still have today?
This is very important in order to understand the gospel today. This woman has been bleeding for twelve years and the young girl is twelve years old and is very sick. There is a beautiful parallelism that makes a wonderful catechesis. There are two ways that these women encounter the Lord. The one who is bleeding says that she heard about Jesus. She knows about him because of what others have said. She listened in some sense to the preaching and because of that she will go to look for the Lord. She is seeking him.
The father of the young girl who is very sick and barely alive says to the Lord, if you put your hands on her, she will get well and live. Before Jesus goes to her house she dies and is saved not because she looks for Christ but because of what another does for her. There is someone (her father) who leads Jesus to her. This is a different way to encounter Christ. One seeks him and the other meets him when he comes to her. Which one do you identify with today? Are you the one who is bleeding and looking for help or you are the dead one?
The woman with the constant hemorrhage of blood was suffering a lot. For a Jewish woman to have her period meant that she was impure. Bleeding meant that she was impure, not that the menstruation was a sin but that she had to wait for the bleeding to stop and had to receive a blessing, a purification to return to normal life. During that time, she cannot touch anyone, or they too become impure. So, imagine this woman who is not just bleeding for a few days but for twelve years. She had to be purified before she could touch anyone. She approaches a man, and she touches his cloak. How absolutely daring of her to touch him and he feels a strength going out of him and the woman is instantly healed. Then Jesus realizes that a power has gone out of him, he asks, who touched me? The woman is scared because for this offense she could be stoned to death. It is inconceivable that an impure woman goes around touching men. The woman fell down in front of Jesus and told him the whole truth. The Pharisees were there looking on and for sure they had a stone in their hand. This woman is breaking the law. Jesus also breaks the law and cures her and says, your faith has saved you.
There is an important detail in this healing because the whole crowd is touching Jesus because they were all squeezed together. Even the disciples say what nonsense are you talking about, Lord, everyone is touching you, as we do today in this eucharist. Are you clinging to Jesus, did you come looking for him, are you close to him, are you asking for a miracle, but you have not touched him like this woman, you have not touched him with faith. Touching his cloak is touching Christ himself; you touch him in the sacraments. You came to the eucharist to touch his mantle. Each time you confess you touch the cloak of Christ. To be in the community is to touch the cloak, to touch the hem of his garment, if you are touching it with faith, hopefully. Not to squeeze it but to touch it with faith.
What is faith? This woman knew it. She spent all her money on doctors and things got worse. Jesus sees suffering; he sees our suffering and understands it. This woman knows that there is only one person who can help. Maybe you need to realize that money is worthless, is a vanity, to be someone is worthless, to be beautiful, to have a career, nothing will stop this flow of blood. You are losing your life; you are afraid of dying in your sins with your idols. Because you are a Christian you should be giving your life for the others. But there is death and bleeding in you; this is no life. You cannot get out of yourself and approach the other because you are impure and you seek to stop the bleeding by doctors who make it worse so does your disordered sexuality, drugs, alcohol. It only gets worse and maybe now you are realizing that the only one who can help you is Jesus Christ when you touch him with faith.
Like Israel we need to see that we are slaves that we are eating disgusting things. God has sent you a Moses who can lead you out. You are my people the Lord says. How wonderful this is when we experience these failures, these doctors who make things worse. That is what you are constantly looking for today and even tomorrow. You are going to get worse. Then hopefully we can touch the edge of his cloak, the sacraments and be cured.
The second girl touches nothing and does not seek the Lord. She is already dead. And how is she cured, by the preaching? Jesus says to her, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” It is the strength of the preaching of God’s word; it raises the dead. If you are dead today, I hope the preaching of the word will raise you up. It is the strength of the preaching of the word of God in your life that raises you.
The girl gets up immediately and walks around. All of them were shocked out of their minds, in a stupor. This is how the world will look at you when you are dead today and by the foolishness of the preaching you know that the Lord loves you as you are, and he forgives you. You can say, Lord, you have done everything right. He loves you in the midst of your lust, your adulteries, when you despise others; he is always loving you, even when you steal, when you fall, when you are unfaithful. This is the good news that is life-changing and life enhancing, and you get up and walk. I encourage you may the Lord grant us the grace to praise him as it said in the psalm when you are healed, freed from ourselves, our passions, our reason, our selfish thoughts, our envious looks. May the Lord deliver us with his love and tenderness so we can give life and not die in our stupidities.