NOTES for Лк 8:40-56
These two strikingly different miracles occurred one after the other and are always joined by the Evangelists into a single account. How different the destinies of these two women are! One of them spent half her conscious life hoping in vain for healing, exhausting her entire wealth—both material and spiritual. She endured the shame of her impurity, found the courage to touch the Teacher with an “unclean” hand, and confessed what she had done. The other, a twelve-year-old girl who did not know Jesus and asked Him for nothing, passed through the experience of death and was called out of it through her parents’ faith. They are united by one Lord and by the single action of His mercy. The gulf separating them from us is even greater: two thousand years, culture, geography, and much else. Yet the very same Man acts in our life, healing and raising the dead, uniting us with one another, with those women, and with the multitude who have experienced His action into one family, one Church.