All the Gospel readings, most beloved brethren, bestow upon us great advantages both of the present and of the future life. But today's reading has both conferred all that belongs to hope, and shut out whatever belongs to despair. Ours is a hard and lamentable condition: our innate frailty compels us to sin, and a confusion kindred to sin forbids us to confess; for to do evil is no shame, yet it is a shame to confess: we fear to say what we do not fear to commit. But today a woman, while she sought a silent medicine for her shameful wound, found a silence through which the sinner can come to pardon. The first happiness is not to have come into the foulness of sins, but the second happiness is to have found pardon for sins while the sins remained hidden.
This the prophet had perceived, who said: 'Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven: and whose sins are covered' (Ps. XXXI). 'Behold,' says the evangelist, 'a woman who had suffered an issue of blood for twelve years, came behind and touched the fringe of His garment' (Matt. IX). The woman took refuge in a sudden faith, whom long treatment had failed: she who was ashamed to seek a medicine wished to be healed unto health; she wished not to be known by Him from whom she believed she could be saved. As the air by the whirlwind of the winds, so was the woman troubled by the storms of her thoughts: her plight strove with faith, hope with fear, necessity with shame;
the cold of fear was extinguishing the ardor of her cruel affliction, the force of shame was darkening the light of faith, modest necessity was breaking the confidence of hope. Thus the woman, like a great sea, was tossed by confused tides: she sought how she might make a hidden thing of a public one, a secret of the crowd: she strove that health might return to her, and her modesty not perish; she took care that her cure should not bring injury to the Healer; she provided that health might be restored to her, with the reverence of the Savior preserved. With such a mind, then, the woman deservedly came from the edge of the fringe all the way to the whole sum of the Godhead. 'She came,' it says, 'behind.' But where behind? 'And she touched the fringe of His garment.' She came behind. But where? There was nothing behind, where she found the face she shunned.
In Christ the body was manifold, but the Godhead was simple; He was all eye, who thus saw the suppliant behind Him. She came behind, and touched the fringe of His garment. O what did this woman see dwelling in the interior of Christ, she who saw the whole power of the divinity dwelling in the fringe of Christ! O how the woman taught how great is the body of Christ, she who showed that so much was in the fringe of Christ! Let Christians hear, who daily touch the body of Christ, what a medicine they can take from that body itself, when a woman snatched entire health from the fringe of Christ alone. But — what is to be wept over by us — the woman drew medicine from a wound, while for us the medicine itself is turned back into a wound.
Hence it is that the Apostle thus admonishes and laments over those who touch the body of Christ unworthily: 'For he who touches the body of Christ unworthily takes judgment to himself' — because from that source rashness contracts infirmity, whence faith ought to have received health — and again he added: 'For this cause there are among you many weak and sickly, and many sleep' (1 Cor. XI). Likewise he calls those who sleep 'dead,' whom he mourns as already buried in a living body. Peter and Paul, the princes of Christian faith, spread the knowledge of the name of Christ throughout the whole world; the woman first handed down the discipline of approaching Christ; the woman first gave the pattern by which a sinner may, by a silent confession, blot out his sin without confusion;
how the transgressor, known to God alone, need not be compelled by a modest conscience to lay himself bare of his guilt before men; how a man can by pardon forestall judgment. 'But Jesus,' it says, 'turning and seeing her, said: Take courage, daughter, your faith has made you whole.' But Jesus turned, not by a movement of the body, but by the regard of His divinity; Christ turned to the woman, that the woman might be turned to Christ, that she might take from Him the cure from whom she had taken life, and might know that the cause of her present wound had been the matter of a perpetual salvation. 'Turning and seeing her.' He saw her with divine eyes, not human; He saw her to restore her to health, not to recognize her whom He knew; He saw her — good things are granted, evils are lacking, to him whom God has seen.
This the whole world perceives from usage, saying thus of the happy: 'God has seen him.' God, then, saw this woman, whom by healing He rendered so happy. And what more? Christ taught by the woman's example how faith alone avails wholly unto salvation. But let us now speak of the ruler of the Synagogue, who, while he leads Christ to his daughter, gave the way by which the woman might come to Christ. Thus began the opening of today's reading: 'Behold a certain ruler came and adored Him, saying: Lord, my daughter is even now dead; but come, lay your hand upon her, and she shall live.' It was not hidden from Christ, foreknowing things to come, that the meeting of the aforesaid woman would occur:
through whom the ruler of the Jews might learn that God is not to be moved from place to place, not to be led by a journey, not to be drawn by bodily presence, but to be believed — how present God is everywhere, everywhere whole, everywhere always; and how He can do everything by command, not by labor; send forth mighty works, not carry them; put death to flight not by hand, but by decree; add life not by art, but by precept. 'My daughter is even now dead, but come.' This is to say: The warmth of life yet remains, the traces of the soul are yet seen, the spirit is yet on its way, the master of the house still has a daughter, hell does not yet know her as dead; therefore, that you may be able to retain the departing soul, make haste. The fool thought that Christ could not raise the dead girl unless He held her.
Hence it is that Christ, when He came to the house and saw the girl being bewailed as though lost, in order to move faithless minds toward the end, says that she is sleeping, not dead, that they might believe more easily that she could rise from death than from sleep. 'The girl is not dead,' He says, 'but sleeps.' And truly with God death is a sleep: for God raises the dead to life more swiftly than a sleeper is roused by a man from slumber, and God pours back the quickening warmth upon limbs cold in death sooner than a man could infuse vigor into bodies buried in sleep. Hear the Apostle: 'In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the dead shall rise' (1 Cor. XV). The blessed Apostle, since he could not convey the swiftness of the resurrection in words, fitted it with examples.
Or how could speech there compress its swiftness, where the divine power itself outruns that very swiftness? And how can time appear there, where an eternal thing is bestowed without time? Just as temporality brought time, so eternity has shut time out.