NOTES for Mar 5:21-43
It is hard to imagine, even in our own time, which has lost shame in many ways, a woman who would publicly admit that she had suffered for many years from constant bleeding. But in Israel at that time she also had no right to touch people. A woman with a flow of blood was considered unclean; anyone who touched her had to fast for several days and could not enter the Temple. Yet she so longed for healing and so believed that she touched Jesus, and her trust in Him was so great, that when she felt she had been healed, she decided to testify to it before the whole crowd pressing around Him.
Very often shame prevents us from coming to God, sincerely asking Him for something, and turning to Him. We are ashamed to confess, forgetting that God already sees all our sins, everything we are ashamed of, while the priest is only a witness, endowed with the authority to grant us God's forgiveness, but not endowed with authority to judge us. We have nothing to fear. We are ashamed to bear witness to Christ; we are embarrassed and afraid that people will laugh at us, although Christ said that if we are ashamed of Him, He too will be ashamed of us before the Father.