Tuesday, February 4, 2003

We see in the first reading of today’s Mass how Jesus is the leader and the perfector of faith.  What is faith? Faith is our response to God who has revealed himself to us. God has shown himself to us, who he is and what’s in his heart, how much he loves us, and faith is to respond to God by accepting what he says to us, accepting the way he unfolds our lives for us . And that requires trust even when our life unfolds in a way that we do not anticipate, perhaps with difficulties or adversities that we didn’t expect.  For sometimes we have to exercise our faith when things go wrong. At times when things go very wrong in our lives, we think we are so smart and so talented and even then we have to make an act of faith and realize that what I have is not really mine. It’s God who gave me the talent, it’s God who gave me the life to use the way I choose. I try to respond to God’s will in my life with faith, whether in good times or in bad.

We see the faith of the woman in the synagogue.  The woman who was afflicted with a hemorrhage for twelve years is a very sick person.  We have to understand that in Jewish society, a person who has a flow of blood was an outcast. She would not be able to eat with other people, she would not be able to make any kind of commerce with the people around her because she is unclean and therefore she’s not able to enter into ordinary life with the Jewish people,  who were very strict about the flow of blood.  So it was a terrible tragedy for her, for  twelve years. 

St. Luke, who himself was a physician, makes an almost humorous remark: that the woman spent all her money on doctors and not only did the doctors not help, but she grew worse.  Maybe Luke can get away with saying that because he himself is a doctor.  But he was trying to emphasize the terrible condition that she was in and her desperation. Yet she believed in Jesus Christ, she keeps her eyes fixed on Jesus, almost in a literal fashion because the gospel says he was surrounded by crowds of people, and this woman’s whole goal was just to touch the hem of his garment. Not even to be able to speak with him, not even to have an opportunity to exchange words with him, but she’s convinced that if she can touch just his clothing, she’ll be well. And she does, and as you see, Our Lord immediately reacts: “Who touched me?” Again, in a semi-comic fashion, the apostles around him were perplexed: “Well, how can you ask a question like that when the crowd was touching you? Who knows who touched you? Dozens of people touched you. “ He said, “No, I felt a power come forth”.  And of course, he knew the woman who touched him, he knew exactly who she was , he knew everything about her, but he played dumb, you might say, so she could come forward and make a public act of faith.  She’s trembling and afraid, she falls down before Jesus  and tells him the whole truth and Our Lord says to her: “Your faith has saved you”.  He wanted her to come forth and admit to everyone the faith that brought about a change in her life. He doesn’t want it to happen in a corner and no one to know why he’s come, to demonstrate to us that he’s God.

And of course this miracle was an interruption, as Jesus  was on his way to save a little girl’s life who is dying, the daughter of the official, Jairus. So that’s why he comes and says to the messenger: “ Don’t trouble the master, she’s dead.” Then, Our Lord says to the girl’s father: “Do not be afraid, just have faith”. How many times do we need to hear these words?  When tragic or difficult things happen in our lives, do we have faith? That’s when need faith, not when everything is going smoothly. Of course, Jesus raises the little girl from the dead . This is an amazing miracle. She was really dead. As Luke describes it, the mourners were there, everybody knew she was dead, the whole town knew. When Jesus said she wasn’t dead, they laughed at him. Our Lord goes in and brings her back to life.

It’s a powerful miracle, the faith of Jairus, the faith of the woman with the hemorrhage. It’s the faith that we have to exercise as a response to God’s revealing himself to us. We start with the premise that God really exists, and that He loves us and would give himself to us so that we can count on him through thick and thin, through good times and bad. That’s where we start from.  We don’t start with the premise that I will believe in God if everything goes well.  We start with the premise that I believe in God because He has revealed himself to me, and now whether things go well or not, I can keep my eyes fixed on Jesus. When I’m in need, I must have faith , and go and ask for help. In the prayers of the Mass we ask for help and God grants us the miracles that we need…sometimes in ways we don’t exactly expect. He has his own way of helping us in difficult situations; maybe we want something more dramatic and instantaneous like these miracles, but he will help us, in one way or another. We grow closer and closer to Jesus through our acts of faith. 

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