So, after all, does a miracle convince? As it turns out, not everyone and not always. Faced with manifestations of God's power, the power of the Kingdom, that Jesus made entirely obvious to everyone, it would seem impossible not to believe in the miracle. But apparently one can bear witness to the Kingdom, yet it is impossible to prove its reality to someone who does not want to believe. The Pharisees, for example, invent ever new explanations for something that, in essence, needs no explanation at all but only needs to be accepted. They have no wish to accept it, and therein lies the whole problem.

One might think that the Pharisees, of all people, since they professed messianic hope, should only have rejoiced at the appearance of the Messiah and the Kingdom in the world. And they probably would have, had Jesus acted as the Messiah was supposed to act according to those same Pharisees' ideas. But the problem was precisely that Jesus did not conform to those ideas and had no intention of doing so.

Then what could not fail to happen did happen: the logic of opposition demands escalation, and eventually escalation came. Previously the leaders of the Pharisaic movement had tried to explain Jesus' miracles and healings in more or less neutral terms. Now they move to direct and very serious accusations, in effect accusing the Savior of paganism and demon worship. The calculation is simple: if you strike, strike with all your strength and without restraint; if you accuse, make the accusation as difficult as possible to answer.

Nor is this merely a desire to rid themselves of Jesus. His accusers, it seems, are trying to convince not only others but themselves that they are right. To do so they need the gravest possible accusations, and it no longer matters how plausible those accusations are. In such a situation the mind will accept any argument as long as it justifies rejecting what cannot reasonably be rejected. They seek to frighten not only others but themselves, and to frighten themselves so thoroughly that there can be no road back and no one will even dare think that this Man might be from God.

Such intimidation requires a taboo that blocks, even at the subconscious level, every attempt to view the situation differently. The accusation of demon worship was just such a taboo—a taboo that became the last refuge of religiosity opposed to the Kingdom.

The story of the woman who suffered from a flow of blood and was healed by touching the edge of Jesus' garment differs somewhat from other stories of healings. First of all, what stands out here is that the woman does not address Jesus at all, asks Him for nothing, but only silently touches Him. In another version of this account, however, Jesus does notice her, but He does so on His own initiative, while the woman, on the contrary, tries as far as possible to remain unnoticed.

It would appear that such a desire to obtain what one wants as if secretly, without asking anything of the One from whom one expects help, should rather speak against such a person. But on closer examination everything turns out not to be so simple: the woman who suffered from a flow of blood was considered unclean, and by touching anyone at all she inevitably defiled the one she touched. It is quite understandable how a person defiled in this way would react. The risk was great and was justified only by the woman's hope for a miracle, for healing. In the case of healing there would no longer be any question of defilement: the disease had retreated, the bleeding was gone, and therefore there was nothing defiling. The healed woman would only have to perform the purification ritual and offer the prescribed sacrifice. But if healing had not occurred, the woman could have been accused of a rather serious offense.

Despite this, she resolved to act without asking permission. She evidently understood very well that by her request she would have placed the One to whom she appealed in an ambiguous position: He quite likely would not have wanted to refuse her, but by agreeing He risked defiling Himself if the healing did not take place, which would have been at least unpleasant for Him. And He could still, as the woman probably thought, simply refuse, not wanting extra problems. So she resolves to act at her own risk, fully trusting the One from whom she sought healing, and yet wanting to reduce possible problems for Him to a minimum. As we can see, she fully trusts this stranger, believes in His power, and receives her reward, being healed of the disease from which she had suffered for many years.

Constant fatigue, or, as today's reading says, exhaustion, is the ordinary condition of modern people. A hard, tense life, constant problems, and the struggle to survive force a person to gather all strength into a tight fist.

And sheep without a shepherd are a very exact image of how a person behaves in such a situation. Rushing from side to side, not finding the road, falling into the wolf's teeth, crying out in terror, not finding the way, running without knowing where - anyone who has seen lost sheep knows how quickly they lose all their calm.

A person left alone with himself sooner or later falls into the same existential panic before a cruel and frightening world whose laws he does not understand and cannot understand. Only by lifting his head and acknowledging his connection with God and his need for communion with Him does a person receive the help and support that give strength to live.