Twin healings

July 10, 2017 Monday
14th Week in Ordinary Time1st Reading: Genesis 28:10-22
Gospel: Mt 9:18–26
While Jesus was speaking to them, an official of the synagogue came up to him, bowed before him and said, “My daughter has just died, but come and place your hands on her, and she will live.” Jesus stood up and followed him with his disciples.Then a woman who had suffered from a severe bleeding for twelve years came up from behind and touched the edge of his cloak. For she thought, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.” Jesus turned, saw her and said, “Courage, my daughter, your faith has saved you.” And from that moment the woman was cured.When Jesus arrived at the official’s house and saw the flute players and the excited crowd, he said, “Get out of here! The girl is not dead. She is only sleeping!” And they laughed at him. But once the crowd had been turned out, Jesus went in and took the girl by the hand, and she stood up. The news of this spread through the whole area.
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
Today’s Gospel presents two females, a young girl taken for dead and a woman of age suffering from severe hemorrhage. Jewish culture had a very low regard for women. As if it was not enough that they were women, their circumstances pulled them even lower than the status ascribed to them by society. The woman was bleeding for 12 years. Twelve is among the numbers used in Jewish numerology to describe perfection. (“Twelve Tribes of Israel” is one example). Taken symbolically, the woman was a perpetual menstruant. This made her unclean in the eyes of a society that regarded escape of blood as desecration to life.
The girl too, being a woman, occupied a low status in society. As if this was not enough, she also lacked the age. Minors did not enjoy the status which the minors of today are enjoying. (Recall how the Apostles drove the children away when they began to mill around Jesus in Luke 18:15-17). Worse, she lacked life, as she was taken for dead.
Their stories highlight the power of faith. The apparent death of the child highlights the faith of her father who still goes to Jesus even though he knows that his child is dead. The case of the bleeding woman highlights the faith of a desperate creature that breaks loose from the tentacles of discouragement and touches the tassel of Jesus for some cure.
They only needed a little attention from Jesus, yet Jesus turns upon them all the floodlights. Jesus goes to the house of the official to bring her daughter back to life. The woman only tries to “steal” a little cure from him, but Jesus allows her to steal the whole show. In Jesus, insignificant people are important. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.
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