13th Sunday of Ordinary time

Mark 5:21-43 "Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction." … "Do not be afraid; just have faith."

We are presented with two miracles: the first is a woman who has lost all hope in worldly help seeks God and reaches for Him with the hope that God would help her; the second is a little girl who is unable to seek God because she has died. Though unable to seek God her father goes and seeks God on her behalf.

Faith was an essential element of each miracle. Our Lord says to the first: "Daughter, your faith has saved you." And to the father who had just received the news of the death of his daughter Our Lord says: "Do not be afraid; just have faith." Faith that brought Jairus to his knees in front of Christ – and that faith raised his daughter back to life. Faith that propelled the woman to touch Jesus’ cloak,

We can see in these two miracles also a spiritual reality of spiritual sickness and death. The first represents those who are spiritually sick, unable to control the flow of evil thoughts, desires and actions; the second represents those who are spiritually dead, unable to turn to God.

Questions we may have are: Why didn’t God cure the haemorrhaging woman without her having to touch Him? And why did Jesus go all the way to Jairus’s house and take the little girl by the hand in order to bring her back to life? Why not just do it from a distance? It is because God wants to be close to us; he wants to live in friendship with us. And since we are human beings, that closeness, that friendship requires not only spiritual contact, but physical contact as well.

God’s touch and physical closeness is the core of the Church’s sacramental vision of faith: God doesn’t have to operate through material elements like water, oil, bread, and wine, but he chooses to do so, because it better fits our spiritual/material human nature. The sacraments, the church buildings, the vestments, the liturgy, the blessings, the art, the music… These are all places where we encounter God, instruments through which God is present and touches our daily lives.

Why does God wait so long? He comes after twelve years for the haemorrhaging woman. He arrives at Jirus’s house after his daughter has died. Often it is the case that we only really and truly turn to God when we have tried everything else. And God becomes our last hope.

“When the woman suffering from a flow of blood believed and touched the hem of the Lord’s clothing, her flow of blood dried up. In the same way, every soul wounded by sin and punished by a flood of evil thoughts will be saved it if draws near to the Lord in faith.” – St. Ammon

“He who trusts in himself is lost. He who trusts in God can do all things.” - St. Alphonsus Liguori3

To those who are struggling spiritually I encourage you to work on your prayer life. Live with God, speak with God, call on God. Like the haemorrhaging woman, seek Him and He will save you and heal you from your spiritual sickness.

To those who have children who have left the faith I encourage you to pray just as much. Like Jirus, come to God praying for your children, that they may receive the grace of faith and that they may be saved from the eternal death.