We just heard two famous healing stories, and in reflecting on them, there are really two central themes within the healings, faith and humility, so I want to focus on those two aspects, very important virtues of our faith.
Faith and humility are deeply intertwined here, both seem to be necessary for healing. In the story of raising Jairus’ daughter from the dead, we heard, “Seeing him he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him” - Jairus, in the presence of God, knelt down and asked Jesus for to heal his daughter, essentially Jairus got on his knees and prayed for her healing.
Likewise in the healing of the “woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years” after she was healed it said, “The woman, realizing what had happened to her, approached in fear and trembling. She fell down before Jesus and told him the whole truth.”
It doesn’t say exactly what that looked like to fall down before Jesus, but most likely she was kneeling. Sometimes I think of her as prostrating herself, like laying on her face in front of Him, but that would have been difficult to talk to Jesus if her face was pointed toward the floor, so I think of her, and Jairus, as “kneeling” here in these scenes.
Kneeling is a posture of humility, this is why we kneel during Mass in those important moments when Jesus is present, this is why we kneel during Eucharistic Adoration, this is why we genuflect when we come into church even - to drop to a knee or two is expressing our humility with our bodies.
We worship with our bodies. Kneeling, genuflecting, bowing, these are all expressions of humility, acknowledging that God is God and we are not.
If you ever go to Bethlehem and visit the place where Jesus was born, the original Church of the Nativity, the primary door is not a normal door, from the outside it appears to be just an opening in the building that is four feet tall and two feet wide, about the size of the front panel of our ambo. It is called the “Door of Humility.”
The small entry forces all visitors, whether Christian or not, to immediately bow to the site of the Incarnation, to bow to where God took on our humanity here on earth. When we bow during the Creed, we bow at the words which talk about the Incarnation, “by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man,” Jesus becoming one of us in order to save us, to rescue us from going to hell as the result of our sin.
This is why we kneel, genuflect or bow, is because Jesus is our savior, Jesus has rescued all of us from eternal death, and we praise and honor Him in all humility for that.
I was meditating on this first reading from the Book of Wisdom, really striking, it finished by saying, “For God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him. But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who belong to his company experience it.”
When I read that, I was really struck by it - it is on one hand really beautiful, God formed us in His own image to live forever, on the other though, saying since we die, we belong to the devil. But the reality is that we have all sinned and are deserving of death, and that is the way it was when the Book of Wisdom was written, about 50 years before Jesus was born, Jesus hadn’t come yet to rescue us.
But then Jesus came and rescued us through His sacrifice on the Cross, He has rescued us from eternal death. So even though we still die for our sins, God raises us up again, the ultimate healing from our sinfulness, we are given new life, we have been rescued. That was our Psalm today, “I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.”
Jesus has rescued us by His own death. This shows us just how much He loves us. Consider that He created us, in His own image, and He loves what He has made. We love what we make, we love what we create. I was thinking about when I was younger I would often build things with my dad, welding projects, a 7 foot tall windmill, a 4-wheeler trailer, many sprayer frames for 4-wheelers, we do less projects now but even a few weeks ago we built a new volleyball court together.
I’m proud of that work I have done with my father, I love it in a sense. But when God the Father and God the Son look at us, you’d better believe that they are proud of us, proud of their own creation. We were created in God’s image!
That is humbling, but that is the point. We should have humility because we didn’t create ourselves, we didn’t rescue ourselves either, God did that work. We can be proud of what we do here on earth, but ultimately we have to give God the credit, He created us with these gifts and talents, He chose to adopt us as His sons and daughters.
When we realize that, we can not only have humility, giving the credit to God, but we can have a deep faith that God loves us and cares for us and wants what is best for us. But it seems like, at some level, He can only help us when we turn to Him with that same faith and humility we heard about today.
After the healing of the woman Jesus “said to her, "Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction."” Before Jesus brought Jairus’ daughter back to life He said, “Do not be afraid; just have faith.” Fear makes sense when we realize we can’t do it on our own, we don’t have the power.
But we don’t have to do it on our own! God has the power, but even more so, He has the love for us, that not only does He heal Jairus’ daughter, He cared so much for her that He insisted she be given something to eat, He cares for us, His beloved creation, in all of our earthly and spiritual needs.
As I pondered this, it's like our Catholic faith. Not only did He raise us to new life in Himself, but because of His tender care, He gives us something to eat: The Eucharist. God cares for all of our needs.
It takes faith and humility to turn to God in our need. How humbling would it have been for the woman to have to turn to God after trying to do it on her own for 12 years? How humbling would it be for a father to realize he couldn't save his own daughter?
And even though they probably should have done it sooner, like my encouragement from last week, they did it eventually, they went to Jesus with faith and humility.
My encouragement this week is to have faith in the God who created you and loves you and cares for you, trusting in Him in every circumstance of our life, with great confidence and humility, and submit ourselves to His Holy Will.