13th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mark 5:21-43
We sometimes hear people complain that they cannot lift themselves up to the level of prayer or to a relationship with God. Because God is so ‘holy’, so ‘spiritual’ they cannot imagine how we, mere earthly creatures, can understand God or be understood by God.
In many ways the Gospel reading of today’s Mass is very down-to-earth. Some of the phrases used can be heard today outside any church, in any local store or pub; ‘she had been under various doctors for twelve years, and she was no better’: ‘give her something to eat’.
The episodes which we read give the impression of a gathering of real people and there appears to be close contact. Physical contact with Jesus and the crowd. Again, the number of references to physical felling is remarkable; ‘lay your hands on her’: ‘touched his cloak’: ‘the crowd is pressing round you’: ‘taking the child by the hand’. These are real people who suffer, who are frightened, who weep and wail, who laugh, who are astonished. And Jesus is in their midst sharing all of these human emotions with them. When it comes to matters of faith, closeness to Jesus is all important. The woman must touch the garment of Jesus in order to be healed and it is because Peter, James and John and the family of the little girl have already expressed their faith in Jesus that they witness the raising of the girl from death.
We don’t need fancy, wordy prayers in order to communicate with the Lord. We need not go into some sort of spiritual ecstasy in order to pray. The plea ‘my daughter is desperately ill, come lay your hands on her’ or the wish ‘if I can touch even his clothes, I will be well again’ are prayers that come from a human heart. They are prayers which come easily to our lips and now we can be confident that they are heard. The Lord does not need the answer to ‘who touched me?’ He is waiting for us to approach him with faith and expectation.