Monday in the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 5, 2021

Matthew 9:18-26

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.

In Matthew’s account of the raising of Jairus’s daughter, we learn from the man’s own lips that he knows his daughter has just died, which helps us understand the attitude of the people who come from his house, in St. Mark’s account, to tell him, “Your daughter is dead.  Why trouble the teacher further?” (Mark 5, 35).  They had come out to bring him back to the house to grieve there and arrange for the burial.

“Your faith has saved you.”  These words of Jesus to the suffering woman are important words for us to consider.  In the context of this particular Gospel story, faith “saves” a suffering woman from her condition: she is completely healed.  But when the Lord speaks of “saving”, he also means “salvation from sin”.  Sin makes us sicker than any disease and renders us more helpless than any physical accident.  But faith will save us.  Faith will heal our condition and restore us to full spiritual health.  That is, our faith gives us the capacity for receiving the grace that does this for us.  

St. Paul tells us that, “Faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not” (Hebrews 11, 1).  The Greek word translated here as “substance” can also mean “reality” or “assurance”.  St. Thomas Aquinas, reflecting on this, says, “Faith is a habit of mind, whereby eternal life is begun in us, making the intellect assent to what is non-apparent."  A “habit of the mind” means “an abiding and stable state”, as opposed to a momentary or otherwise temporary conviction.  This assent of the intellect “to what is non-apparent”, namely, to that which is divinely revealed, is fixed, set as a “habit of the mind”.  Because of this, eternal life is able to begin in us: we have the capacity for it.

This suffering woman’s faith is not due to a sudden impulse.  She firmly and fixedly believes that Jesus is Lord and that therefore he has the power to heal not only herself, but anyone he wishes to heal.  Her faith should be credited as much more than it customarily is.  Her faith was abiding.  We have this faith, too, and state it publicly when we recite the Nicene Creed at Mass.  It can grow and it can die, for it must be nourished.  By making acts of faith throughout the day, by asking for the grace to believe in what the Lord has revealed to us, by reading the Scriptures, and by teaching others, we increase our faith and extend our capacity to receive the grace that saves.  Prayer to the Lord Jesus is very necessary, especially at Mass and before the Blessed Sacrament or a crucifix, for we cannot believe in someone we do not talk to.