Daily Reflection Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

The story of the daughter of Jairus (as Mark and Luke so name him, the official in Matthew) is found in all three Synoptic accounts along with the story of the Woman with the Hemorrhage that lies within it. Matthew’s account we hear today is the briefest of the accounts with Mark giving the fullest account of these healing miracles of Jesus. Mark’s much more detailed account, especially regarding the Woman with the Hemorrhage, is the one to read (Mk 5:25).

There we learn that a woman who has suffered with a hemorrhage for twelve years, pushes through the large crowd to simply touch Jesus outer robe which she believes will bring her healing. Only Mark tells us that she spent everything she had on doctors who only made her worse. Since her affliction is a woman’s disease that made her ritually impure, on top of her great physical suffering was her moral suffering of not be able to enter the Temple. Weak and dying she desperately seeks Jesus. In faith she does indeed touch the Lord’s robe and she is “immediately” healed of her hemorrhage.

Can you imagine what this must have felt like for this poor woman who had suffered so many years with this painful illness, to feel it suddenly gone completely, that constant pain and misery ended. Jesus must have felt it too for he comes to a complete stop asking who had touched him. His incredulous Apostles, in lieu of the large crowd pressing all around him and he asking who had touched him, simply look confused. But Jesus keeps insisting to ask, who touched me? Finally, the woman comes forward, “in fear and trembling,” and reveals it all to Jesus who tells her the good news, “Courage my daughter, your faith has saved you!”

This unnamed woman of the Gospels offers us so many lessons of faith and hope in God, courage to do the right thing and great gratitude to God for blessings received. I’m sure she continuously shared this story with everyone she ever met for the rest of her life. Women like her in the Gospels who met Jesus, were all great witnesses to Jesus and to his grace in the early Church and their stories deeply inspired many and continue to inspire us. It also adds to the several stories of women in the Gospels. Whereas the Apostles, as it were, stood atop the pinnacles and preached the Gospel loudly and forcefully, theses women preached it in a more subdued way but one no less effective. The Church has honored them by preserving so many of their stories in the Gospels. Let us pray they will continue to call the Church to a growing awareness of the need to give women a much greater role in its ministry.