My daughter has just died.
But come, lay your hand on her, and she will live.
This ruler was able to find help for his daughter because of his faith. Even though his daughter died while Jesus attended to the hemorrhaging woman he did not lose heart. Even when his daughter succumbed to her sickness and died the ruler did not abandon his faith. He refused to listen to the chorus of voices that assured him that the situation was now hopeless and that there was no longer any need to trouble Jesus about it.
We can learn a lot from this ruler. We may come to Jesus for a healing and expect it to be given on our timeline, in just the way we ask. But from the ruler we can learn to persist in faith even when we are made to wait, and to not insist that Jesus address the problem in just the way we asked. When we keep our peace and wait with patience on the Lord we give him room to work in even greater ways than those for which we dare to ask. He may well tell us that whatever the precious daughter represents for us, whatever circumstance it was that we thought was dead and beyond help, was in fact merely asleep and that his voice can wake it up.
She said to herself, “If only I can touch his cloak, I shall be cured.”
There crowd was pressing in on Jesus and many people were brushing against him. But it was only this woman who touched him with faith. Although the ruler's plight seemed to him more immediate, and in that way challenged his patience, this woman showed amazing patience in a different way by not giving up even after twelve years of suffering at the hands of doctors who were unable to help her.
“Courage, daughter! Your faith has saved you.”
And from that hour the woman was cured.
How can our own prayers be effective? We may need more than a single moment of inspired faith. Jesus might be asking us to believe and keep believing in spite of the way the circumstances appear to, if anything, be getting worse. We should hold fast to our belief that is no problem he can't solve, no situation he can't work out for the good of those who love him.
The world may tell us that the situation is hopeless, that our daughter is already dead, or that we are unclean and will only pollute anyone who touches us. But we should let the word of God convince us that Jesus is not deterred by what the world considers hopeless, or defiled by what would make others unclean. We need not, therefore, give in to the temptation to isolate ourselves in mourning and sorrow, but instead invite the touch of Jesus by our faith in him.
Then he had a dream: a stairway rested on the ground,
with its top reaching to the heavens;
and God’s messengers were going up and down on it.
Jesus is the ladder between heaven and earth, the one on whom the angels ascend and descend (see John 1:51). This is what we touch when we touch Jesus with our faith. We do this in a special way every time we receive him in the Eucharist with awareness and devotion.
Maybe it is time to reassess some hopes on which we have given up. The world may be telling us we are too unclean to receive help, or that it is too late even for Jesus. It is never too late for Jesus to bring healing and meaning to whatever we have suffered, to give us beauty for ashes (see Isaiah 61:3).
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