Being a bit of a hypochondriac
myself, I can appreciate the ancient world’s anxieties about blood and contact
with blood. Ancient people typically treated blood as sacred, the repository of
life. Being sacred, it was presumed to be dangerous, with all the dread and awe
that typically surround the sacred in traditional societies. So the plight of
the woman afflicted with hemorrhages for
12 years [Mark 5:25-35a] was much
more than a merely medical condition. A whole set of social and religious
restrictions would have been involved. Her illness had a public, social
dimension, rendering her ritually unclean, effectively excluding her from the
community. Anyone she touched or who touched her would also automatically be
unclean – although only until evening. Likewise whatever she touched or touched
her would have to be washed. Imagine how afraid she must have been of touching
people – even accidentally! Imagine living like that for 12 years! Imagine what
that would do to her sense of herself – and her relations with others! What happens
to a person when the very way one is has been socially defined as evil?
Suddenly, into all this
sadness and suffering, into this burdened woman’s world, walked Jesus, famous
already for his powerful acts of healing, revealing what kind of God our God
really is, a God who (as we just heard in the 1st reading) does not rejoice in the destruction of the
living [Wisdom 1:13]. As it says in
the Catechism [1503]: Christ’s compassion
toward the sick and his many healings of every kind of infirmity are a resplendent
sign that “God has visited his people” and that the kingdom of God is close at
hand.
Somehow, something about
Jesus’ presence empowered her to take a chance. Taking advantage of the cover
provided by the crowd, she boldly touched Jesus’ cloak. And immediately
her bold faith was rewarded. Immediately
her flow of blood dried up. She felt in her body that she was freed of her
affliction.
What the expensive medical
establishment could not accomplish in 12 years, Jesus cured in an instant – and
for free! And, in the process, Jesus set her free, not only from her illness,
but from all its catastrophic social consequences and its oppressive emotional
and psychological burdens.
Jesus recognized her as a Daughter of Israel, a member of God’s
People. And, because she was a member of God’s People, she deserved
to be included as a full member of the community, and Jesus would not permit
her healing to remain secret and unnoticed. In that crowded scene, certainly
her secretive, hidden touching of Jesus could have remained hidden – had it not
been for Jesus’ insistence on asking and his insistence on her speaking up.
Her situation sort of
reminds me of the line in a Billy Joel song from, I don’t know, 25 maybe almost
30 years ago: And isn’t that a kind of
madness To be living by a code of silence When you’ve really got a lot to say.
Secrecy is seldom
wholesome, and Jesus would not be a party to the destructive dishonesty that is
both the root and result of secrecy in so many human relationships.
And so she fell down before Jesus and told him the
whole truth. She said what needed to be said; and In response Jesus
promised her liberation from her suffering and told her to “Go in peace.”
In a little while, we too
will be told to “Go in peace.” Jesus’
words were not meant to comfort just one woman who happened to have been afflicted with hemorrhages for 12 years and
just happened one day to touch his clothes!
Jesus’ words are equally
addressed to all of us today - whatever hidden or not-so-hidden burdens we
bear, whatever sad (or not so sad) secrets define us - to do as she did, to
take the chance that she took, and so experience in our own lives (in some
instances, perhaps for the very first time) the coming of God’s kingdom – a
kingdom of healing and honesty, and so begin to become ourselves active agents
of God’s kingdom’s reconciliation and peace.
Homily for the 13th Sunday
in Ordinary Time, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, July 1, 2012.
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