Monday in the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 10, 2023

Matthew 9, 18-31

While Jesus was speaking, an official came forward, knelt down before him, and said, “My daughter has just died. But come, lay your hand on her, and she will live.” Jesus rose and followed him, and so did his disciples. A woman suffering hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the tassel on his cloak. She said to herself, “If only I can touch his cloak, I shall be cured.” Jesus turned around and saw her, and said, “Courage, daughter! Your faith has saved you.” And from that hour the woman was cured.  When Jesus arrived at the official’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd who were making a commotion, he said, “Go away! The girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they ridiculed him. When the crowd was put out, he came and took her by the hand, and the little girl arose. And news of this spread throughout all that land.

“While Jesus was speaking.”  St. Matthew clearly wishes to connect the incidents he is about to relate with what the Lord has been saying, replying to the disciples of John the Baptist that he is the “bridegroom” of whom their master spoke, and teaching an important lesson about grace and the need to be prepared for it with faith.  As we read through this Gospel Reading we should keep in mind that Matthew’s method is to underline his teachings with his reports of the Lord’s miracles, which reflect back on the teachings.

“My daughter has just died. But come, lay your hand on her, and she will live.”  We know from St. Mark’s Gospel that this man’s name was Jairus.  He tells Jesus that his daughter has “just died” or “just now died”.  It is not sunset yet so she has not been buried: her body is in the house where she died.  According to Jewish tradition, the soul does not leave the body until it is buried or even until decay sets in.  Reaching Jesus at this point gives the man hope that his daughter can still be revived.  He thus feels safe to ask Jesus to lay his hand on her, which he would not do if her body was corrupt in any way or if it were about to be buried, on account of the laws regarding purity.  “She will live.”  That is, literally, according to the verb tense, She will be living — in a continual sense, as opposed to reviving and then dying again shortly thereafter.

“A woman suffering hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the tassel on his cloak.”  The interwoven stories of the little girl and the woman suffering from hemorrhages are very much compressed as compared to St. Mark’s account (thirteen verses in Matthew, twenty-one verses in Mark), but this is because of the way Matthew sees the miracles, as confirming the previous teachings rather than as actions to be admired in themselves.  Now, the father of the girl asks Jesus to lay his hand on the body of his dead daughter, not just to come and command her to be well.  The woman with the hemorrhages is unclean and dares to touch him through his cloak.  The Lord, by his power, cleanses all things which might be infected by even the smallest taint of impurity.  He does so boldly.  He does not recoil from the body of the dead girl or even from the unclean woman.  He takes their uncleanness away.  It is how he strides without hesitancy through our world and is eager to die so that he might take away the uncleanness of our sins.  

“If only I can touch his cloak, I shall be cured.”  Both the father and the woman show great faith in the Lord, bringing their fearful and desperate situations before him.  They do not draw back from asking, and the Lord does not make them wait before answering.  “Courage, daughter! Your faith has saved you.”  The Lord could also have said to the little girl after he raised her up: “Courage, daughter! Your father’s faith has saved you.”  Faith opens the way for grace.

“The flute players and the crowd who were making a commotion.”  The response to death for those who do not have faith is to make noise and otherwise to distract themselves from the reality of death.  The flute players were professional musicians who accompanied those in mourning.  These seem to have arrived very quickly after the girl’s death, signifying the desperation of the godless to start the process in which the body will be buried, in this way “hiding” death.  “The girl is not dead but sleeping.”  The Lord dismisses the flute players and the crowd whose interest is less in the girl and her family than in making a scene, drawing attention to themselves in their displays of mourning, as though to distract the Lord’s work, which the godless do in order to preserve their illusion that there is no God.  They then ridicule him for interrupting them, but with no real help to offer, they melt away.

“He came and took her by the hand, and the little girl arose.”  When the one who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life touches death, death flees in panic.  The Lord shows us in the raising up of this little girl from death what happened at the moment he himself died: he touched death then not from the outside, as he does here, but from the inside.  It attempted to swallow up the Lord of life and was itself dissolved so that we might have eternal life.  We pray that one day we may be touched by Jesus and raised.