Homily

Two stories, two females—and not surprising for Luke to have them in his gospel because his greatest example of the most special and faithful of all people is also a woman, Mary the mother of Jesus. And notice how he ties these two miracle stories together. Jairus has a daughter who is deathly ill and Jesus calls the woman with the hemorrhage "daughter." They are both daughters of Israel, one older, one younger.

What is the key element in each of these healing stories? You might say, "well, healing!" and that would be a good answer but I think a better answer is that they are stories of faith, and slightly unusual stories of faith. The woman with the hemorrhage certainly had a tremendous faith. In her story, notice it is not the usual case of someone coming to Jesus and asking for a cure for themselves or someone else. That's almost always how such miracles take place. But not this time. It's as though the woman's faith has a life of its own as it pushes her into the crowd which is bustling all around Jesus, her faith pushing her with its power and yet at the same time with great humility. She needs no meeting, no words of healing; she won't even stop Him on the street. She'll just touch the tassels on His cloak. That's all she needs. This is truly an amazing and wonderful faith.

Now if it had been me, I think I might have acted a bit differently, such as screaming at the top of my lungs, "Help me, help me, please cure me, Jesus!" I would have to be satisfied that I caught His attention so that He might heal me, so that He would stop and say something or do something that would cure me. But for this woman no such dramatic and direct efforts are needed; just a touch of fringe. Now isn't that extraordinary?

Then you have the young girl who has died. We don't hear of any words of faith coming from her parents, but we are to presume that they did have faith, because Jesus says, "Do not be afraid; just have faith and she will be saved."

Two stories of the power of faith—and I think it's rather natural or easy to think along the lines of, well, if you have enough faith you can be healed or even come back from death's door. It could seem as though faith is like a magic tool that can be used to bring about amazing results. But we may know those who have said that they prayed and prayed, and they believed that God could heal or help them or their loved one, but nothing happened. And maybe they even lost their faith, or ended up with less faith than they had before.

That's what can happen if we see faith as a tool to help us get what we want. Faith is not a tool; it is a way of life. It allows us to see and live and act in this world not according to what we are able to perceive and understand on our own, but to see this world, live in it and act in it as the Lord tells us, to put our trust not in ourselves, nor in other people, nor in material goods but in God alone. To understand that this natural, physical life is not the only life we have, and that the greatest freedom we can achieve is not the freedom from fear or suffering, but the freedom to love God with our whole heart and our whole soul and our neighbor as ourselves. To live in faith is, even if happens over a long period of time, to become more and more aware of the great love of Jesus Christ for us, not because He does what we want Him to do for us, but because even in our great unworthiness, we learn to believe He still wants us. Faith calls us to reform our ways of thinking and living and turning ourselves over to a greater belief in the Gospel of our Lord. It sounds so simple to say that we just need to put our trust in God Who is All-Powerful and the Creator of all. It seems crazy to believe that we know better than He does, that we can get through life more easily by following our own path, that when all is said and done, it's better to trust in your own instincts and abilities if you want to have a good life. It seems crazy to say stuff like that. That's why we don't say it. But does that mean we are not constantly tempted to live like crazy people?

To live in faith is to be constantly and acutely, actively aware that there is so much more than what we can see, and hear and touch, and that even miracles are possible, and death is not the end of us. To live in faith is to trust in infinite power, not limited physical force, to invest in a life of charity instead of a life of self-centeredness, and live as though there really is a God Who loves us and desires that we share in His divine life forever. To live in faith is not just to say we believe that bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, but it is also to receive Him, talk to Him, listen to Him and beg His help so that we may more completely turn our lives over to Him and trust in His way of truth and life. We have so much more than His tassel to touch, and if we let Him grab us by the hand, He will always lift us up into a greater life now and forever and ever.

Let us pray for a greater faith