Sermons 29

You are to hear today, brethren, and, as the holy evangelist Mark relates, to learn together with me how, before Christ, the sovereignty of the Synagogue slips and falls headlong, and how in a twofold manner it confesses Him God and Lord: for it adores Him according to the command of the Law that says, 'You shall adore the Lord your God' (Deut. VI), and it shows Him to be the Restorer of life when it implores the healing of a dying daughter. 'There came to Him,' it says, 'a certain ruler of the synagogue named Jairus.'

'And seeing Him, he fell down at His feet, and besought Him greatly, saying: My daughter is at the point of death; come, lay your hand upon her, that she may be safe and live' (Mark V). Before the discourse opens the mystery of the Gospel's meaning, let me here disclose a little the sufferings of parents, which they take upon themselves and bring forth from their affections and love for their children. With the household standing round, amid the tender and gentle attentions of kinsfolk, the delicate daughter lies down upon her little bed: the father lies stretched dry upon the ground and rolls about; she sinks in body, he wastes away in mind and soul; she endures the secret sufferings of her sickness, he, all foul and mournful, is borne and tossed about wholly before the people; she dies unto rest, he lives unto torment.

And surely we have passed over the anxious vows of parents when they beget their offspring: the perilous travails when they bring them forth, when they nurse them, the sorrowful labors and continual pains when the children fall sick: worse than the day of death is when their dear pledges go before them. Alas for me! why do the children know nothing of such things? why do they not feel these things? why do they not toil to render the like to their parents? And yet the piety of parents perseveres: because whatever parents spend upon their children, God, the Parent of all, will repay to the parents. But let us return to what was proposed. 'And there came a certain ruler of the synagogue, named Jairus, and seeing Him fell down at His feet, and besought Him greatly, saying: My daughter is at the point of death;'

'come, and lay your hand upon her, that she may be safe.' That he thus laments the daughter's last extremity with a tearful supplication, that he thus begs a remedy for her sickness, proves and shows an affection well-nigh in despair; whence it is that he thus demands the order of the cure: 'Come, lay your hand upon her.' The sick man does not command in what manner she should be healed, but only implores that He heal her. But since he was a ruler of the synagogue, he had here knowledge of the Law; and along with the word he had read that man too was figured as being fashioned by the hand of God. He believed, therefore, in God, that by the same hand by which he had known his daughter to be created, she could be re-created and led back to life. We have understood what it means: 'Come, and lay your hand upon her.' That He who of His own accord laid it to create might, being again entreated, lay it to restore.

This is what the prophet confesses, when he sings in the Psalms: 'You have formed me, and have laid your hand upon me' (Ps. CXXXVIII). Because He who laid it when He formed me from nothing, laid it again to reform me from ruin. Finally, that same Psalmist, when he perceived the salvation of this hand and obtained its bounty, broke forth again into a repeated cry: 'The right hand of the Lord,' he says, 'has wrought power, the right hand of the Lord has exalted me; the right hand of the Lord has wrought power' (Ps. CXVII). And that he might show he had merited what the ruler of the synagogue had begged, he added: 'I shall not die, but live.' The other, when he asked, had said: 'Come, lay your hand, that she may be safe, and live'; this one, having now obtained it, exults: 'I shall not die, but live.' The right hand of the Lord is Christ, as we are taught by the prophetic word.

And truly He wrought power when He vanquished the devil; when, having bound the strong one, as He Himself said, He plundered the vessels of the strong (Matt. XII); when He destroyed hell, when He put death itself to death. And truly He exalted us, whom He drew up from the depths and lifted to heaven. But now let the discourse pass to the woman, who thus sought a remedy for her hidden wound and shameful sickness, that she might both cover her own shame and preserve the reverence due to the Healer. 'And He went with him, and there followed Him,' it says, 'a great multitude, and they thronged Him: and behold a woman who was in an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things from many physicians, and had spent all she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse;'

'when she had heard of Jesus, came in the crowd behind, and touched His garment, saying: If I shall but touch His garment, I shall be safe. And immediately the fountain of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of the plague.' Not so much are two seas confounded by their waves,

as was the mind of this woman tossed by an ambiguous heap of thoughts. After the desperate struggles of physicians, after costly medicines, after vain and most anxious treatment, where art and skill had already failed the healers, where all the substance of the sick woman had already been consumed, the shameful wound met with its very Author, not by chance but by divine appointment, so that what by human art could not be cured in so many years might be healed by faith and humility alone. The woman stood at a distance, whom nature had suffused with modesty, whom on this account the Jewish law had marked as unclean, saying: 'She shall be unclean, and she shall not touch anything holy' (Lev. XV);

fearing to touch, lest she might undergo the Jewish fury, lest she might incur the sentence of the Law. She dared not speak, lest she confound and burden the hearing of the bystanders, lest she become the byword of the peoples — she who for so many years had been the arena and object of sufferings. Since indeed the long and continual pain would not suffer her to bear and endure it any longer, and the swiftness of Christ passing by cut short the time for deliberating, and on the other hand she knew that to one who kept silent, to one who concealed it, health would not be given for her disease. Amid these fierce contests of thoughts, the woman found the sole way of salvation — to steal her cure, as it were, to snatch in silence what she could not avail to ask, both for her own modesty and for reverence toward Him who would grant it;

and that she who did not deserve it in body might reach the Physician in heart, God by faith, and touch only His garment with her hand: knowing that this stealth would grant her not only pardon but also a remedy — a stealth which not will but modest necessity had begotten; especially since she both sought the gain of one stealing and yet begot no loss for Him from whom it was taken. A holy robbery, which is committed with faith as its handmaid, and by faith as the attracting force. Behold where virtue was sought by contrary means, where fraud, with a fitting faith, obtained what it strove for. The woman comes in among those who thronged Him, that she might not be noticed, and presumed that she could steal her cure by faith alone, so as to lie hidden in bearing and in body; she comes behind, and judged herself unworthy to be seen.

Faith healed within a moment of time what human art could not cure in twelve years. After this example, he by his own fault drags out long seasons in sickness, and by his own negligence labors long, who knows not how to be cured by faith alone, but only to be burdened with the expense of spices. The woman touched the garment, and was healed: and she was absolved of an ancient sickness. Wretched are we, who daily handle and receive the body of the Lord, and are not healed of our wounds. It is not Christ who is lacking to the sick, but faith: for far more can He, now abiding in us, cure the wounded, who passing by cured the hidden woman. It suffices for today, brethren, to have recounted the stealth of faith, and the power of the Lord passing by:

but why the Lord, as though not knowing, asks after her whom by the working of His own power He knows to have been healed — since this is now too long — we shall recount in the following sermon.