Fr Oliver Treanor looks at the miracle of the woman who was healed by touching the hem of his garment and explores what it means.
Most of the miracles recorded of Jesus in the New Testament are very deliberate acts on his part. He sees a need, addresses it, then does whatever is necessary for the person concerned. But there is one case where the healing happened even before Jesus knew who it was had been cured. It is one of the most interesting in the whole of the Bible.
The reason Jesus was unaware of the healing is twofold. First he was in a rush: on his way to the bedside of a little girl who was seriously ill. In fact she died before he arrived. So his mind was on that at the time.
Healing touch
Suddenly he stopped in his tracks. ‘Somebody has touched my garments,’ he told those who were with him. And he would not move any further till he found out who. The disciples were amazed at him. ‘You see the crowd pressing round you,’ they said, wondering what had come over him, ‘and yet you say, “Who touched me?” , However, despite the emergency he stood his ground and waited.
He was right. Someone had touched him from behind. Not like others who knocked into him indifferently as people do in a crowd. This person had reached out to him deliberately, had reverently held on to the hem of his cloak, to the little fringe actually that decorated the edges. Then just as quietly she slipped away again into the busy crowd and disappeared.
How did Jesus know something had happened? Because, says Mark’s Gospel (5:30), he felt power for healing go out of him. Automatically. Such is the nature of God. The moment faith stretches out its hand to him, virtue is released even before he can stop it! And that is why Jesus refused to go on till he found her.
Personal encounter
But did it matter who she was? Especially since he was needed by a child close to death? Yes, it did. This woman had not only touched his garments; she had also touched his heart: Anyone who had faith like that, he wanted to
meet. Such trust, he felt, deserved a personal response from him, deserved his friendship. He wanted to affirm this woman’s faith, acknowledge what she had done.
Without the personal, one-to-one encounter with him, she might think that touching relics is more important than knowledge of God. Or that faith can be sustained without talking to him. For her to vanish without finding out. how he cared for her as a person, would have grieved him. And so he put every other case to one side till she came back.
Healing faith
And when she did he told her, ‘It was your faith that healed you’, not the fringe of the garment. He called her, ‘Daughter’, and bade her, ‘Go in peace’, and then he pronounced the words that made her cure complete, ‘Be healed of your disease’. It had been an internal bleeding that had lasted twelve years. An embarrassing complaint, deeply painful, deeply personal. His gentle tone showed his understandirig, his kindness. It also healed her self-respect, her femininity.
And so with us, implies St Mark. Prayer to God means relationship with Christ. Real faith means daily discipleship. Reaching out to him means you don’t run away. You stay. For while God always answers the need of the moment, he wants us to want something more – namely himself. Faith may move mountains, but love conquers God. For the sake of that love, Christ would stand still in a crowd and wait for ever.
So what about the child who died while Jesus delayed? She wasn’t able to reach him like the woman did. Therefore he went to her in his own good time, and simply raised her from the dead.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (August 1998), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
