NOTES for Luk 8:45

A strange reaction at first glance: on one side, a multitude of people pressing from every side, yet this pressure seems unnoticed; on the other, the touch of one woman thirsting for healing, which is noticed immediately. Meanwhile, if one thinks about it, there is nothing strange here. It has long been observed that nowhere is a person so lonely as in a large crowd, even when that crowd is quite dense. It would seem everyone is pressed against one another, the closeness is maximal, but it turns out that the closeness is only physical and there is no other closeness. Apparently Jesus experiences the same in a dense crowd.

Only, unlike us, accidental touches caused by the crowd's density are completely unimportant to Him. He seems not to feel them at all; for Him they are as if they did not exist. This is understandable: personal relationships with those who are near Him are important to Him above all, and when there are no such relationships, there is nothing to speak of and nothing to feel, even if a pressing crowd is all around.

Jesus probably perceived it as an impersonal mass in which an individual person cannot be made out, because a person in a crowd usually does not see himself either, unless he makes a special effort to do so. And although outwardly the crowd's interest was connected precisely with Him, with Jesus, in essence there was no one in this crowd interested in Him.

The excited expectation of a miracle does not count: by itself it does not yet make a person a self-aware person. The woman thirsting for help, for healing, and therefore for personal communion, is another matter. She does not merge with the crowd. She remembers and, at least in part, is aware of herself. Even if through the negative, through a problem, through an illness that until now had been incurable, she is aware.

Alas, in the fallen world it is often through the negative that a person begins to become aware of himself; many cannot be awakened otherwise. And when Jesus is touched consciously, with a striving for a personal and quite concrete relationship with Him, understanding what is wanted from Him, He senses the one touching Him precisely as a person, not as part of the crowd. Then healing is possible, then that power of God which Jesus constantly feels in Himself begins to act, and He feels this power acting through Him. And the one seeking healing receives what he sought, for he has found the One who can heal him.