Daily Reflection Tuesday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

The story of the Daughter of Jairus as well as the Woman with the Hemorrhage in today’s gospel passage from Mark are in all three Synoptic gospel accounts, but Mark’s account is the fullest of them all. That is often the case with Mark, ironically since his is the shortest of all the gospel accounts.
 
It begins with Jairus himself, a synagogue official, falling at Jesus’ feet and begging him to come to his dying daughter, to which the Lord agrees and follows him with his disciples and the large crowd that had met them at the lake shore. Then, while on the way, a desperately ill woman with a hemorrhage (a women’s’ medical issue, clearly) struggles toward Jesus through the large crowd. Mark takes care to tell us that she had “suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors” (all male, we assume) for twelve years who had all just made her even worse (Luke, who Colossians tells us was a physician, leaves this detail out!). It is sad to say that many women, up until only fairly recently, can claim similar experiences with their solely women’s illnesses.
 
The scene is rather extraordinary when we examine it closely. This poor woman who, like the Daughter of Jairus, is also obviously dying and must be extremely weak, somehow makes her way, no doubt painfully, through the thick crowd to just touch the hem of Jesus’ cloak. She has faith that she will be healed by doing only that. And she is, as soon as she touches him (“immediately” says Mark). Mark further states that she felt within her body the hemorrhaging cease. Can you imagine what that must have felt like for this unnamed woman after twelve long years of suffering and pain getting worse and worse? Amazingly, Jesus felt it too and it stopped him in his tracks as he asks who touched him. Of course, his incredulous disciples could only wonder what he was talking about considering the pressing crowd engulfing them. But the Lord knows and persists, looking through the crowd. The poor woman finally comes forward (trembling, not only at the awareness of what had just happened to her but also realizing that by touching Jesus, she, who according to Jewish law was considered ritually “unclean,” had by touching him, broken that law) to tell him the whole story. But Jesus (caring nothing about that) tells her joyfully, “Take courage my daughter (in Matthew’s account), your faith has saved you! Go in peace and be cured of your affliction.” It is one of the most moving stories of healing in the gospels.
 
Then some arrive to break the sad news to Jairus that his daughter has died. “Do not be afraid,” Jesus tells him (probably while embracing him), “Only have faith,” and they continue to the house where people have already begun the ritualized mourning, “weeping and wailing” loudly. When Jesus tells them that the girl is only sleeping, the people “laugh him to scorn” (the more appropriate translation), for they all knew quite well when a girl was dead since it happened all the time. But Jesus puts everyone out but Jairus, his wife and his Apostles and, taking the girl by the hand, he says to her in Aramaic (the language of ancient Palestine of Jesus’ day), “Young girl, I say to you, arise.” It is the exact same thing he says to the dead son of the Widow of Nain when he raised him from the dead (the only other one besides Lazarus he raises from death in the gospels). Again, can you imagine what the girl’s parents’ must have felt to see their daughter now stand up and walk! I’ve always found it a bit amusing, I’m afraid, that he told them to give her something to eat. Dying takes a lot out of you, I suppose! He also told them not to tell anyone, which seems rather remarkable. I’m sure that for the rest of their lives, that was the only thing they ever told everyone who would listen to them, as did everyone else who was blessed enough to have met Jesus.
 
These stories in the gospels of women encountering Jesus are by far the most wonderful of all Jesus’ encounters. It is women in the gospels- the women in today’s passage, the Samaritan woman at the well, the Syrophoenician woman, the woman who showed great love, the woman caught in adultery, the stooped over woman, the widow of Nain, Mary Magdalene, Martha and Mary, Anna in the temple, Elizabeth and the Blessed Mother herself- who make the greatest impressions on us. That these stories of women are in the gospels at all, written during a time of extreme patriarchy, is an enormous testimony to them all, as well as to all women, and a profound message to the Church down through the centuries that continues to beg to be, finally, well heeded.