NOTES for Mat 9:22

Every time a healing takes place in the Gospel, a miracle occurs. It is not merely a miracle of a medical or psychological nature; rather, it is a miracle of revelation about God, showing that He is not as we imagined Him. In nearly all the healings described, Christ truly acts by destroying existing religious notions: He touches the uncleanness of illness and death, He accepts outcasts and the disabled, and He makes not a person's righteousness but their faith the condition for the miracle... Therefore Jesus' Good News concerns not only what God does, healing, forgiving, and raising the dead, but, more importantly, what He is like. For on the path of faith and hope in God, what most often stands in our way are our distorted notions about Him: that He will not rummage in our earthly filth, that He will not want to deal with people like us, and that if He does, He will act according to our ideas of good and evil. Yet we have Good News: there is hope that He is different.

Today’s reading continues the story of the Kingdom entering the world. Jesus walks through the world, bringing with Him a fullness of life never before seen on earth. Where this life appears, there is no room left for sickness or death. A woman who has suffered from bleeding for many years is healed (vv. 20–22); the daughter of the synagogue elder (the ‘ruler of the synagogue’) is raised from the dead (vv. 23–26); the blind receive their sight (vv. 27–31); those who are possessed are freed from the power of dark forces (vv. 32–33). And all this happens naturally, as though of its own accord, without any special effort; His appearance alone is enough for a miracle to take place. Where the fullness of life and the fullness of the Kingdom are present, there is no place for sickness or death. Of course, the Kingdom is only beginning to enter the world; it has not yet been revealed in all its fullness, and so the world too has been transfigured only in part. Its nature has only begun to change, and this process will be completed at the end of time. Yet even this world, not yet fully renewed, is healed of its ailments when it comes into contact with the Kingdom. One cannot live forever in a world that has not been transfigured, but one can be healthy in it and not die before one’s natural time. Everyone who comes into contact with the Kingdom receives this fullness of life that is possible at the present moment. Of course, such contact also requires trust in the One who brought the Kingdom into the world; both healings and raising from the dead become possible only through the faith of those who turn to Jesus (vv. 18, 22, 29). But how deep is this faith? How much do the blind men He healed, for example, trust Jesus (v. 27)? It would seem that their faith was deep: after all, they received their sight, and, in the Savior’s words, they received it ‘according to their faith’ (v. 29). But then something strange happens: the very same Man who healed the blind men asked them to say nothing about what had happened to them (v. 30). Yet they cannot keep silent (v. 31). It would seem that, if you trust the One who has healed you, fulfilling His request—which, after all, is not particularly difficult—should go without saying. But it turns out that trust is not so simple. The two blind men certainly had it when they longed for healing. Now, however, once the healing has taken place and they are no longer blind, they no longer take the requests of the One who healed them seriously. Everything has changed, and what mattered before has now ceased to matter. Before, they listened to Jesus’ words with the greatest attention, and had He required anything of them in order to be healed, they would undoubtedly have done everything exactly as He said. But now that the problem has disappeared and their goal has been achieved, they have forgotten what bound them to Jesus. With that, their sense of responsibility has disappeared as well: the formerly blind men no longer do what Jesus told them to do, but what they themselves consider right. It is easy to desire the Kingdom when there are problems in one’s life, and the more serious the problems, the easier it is. It is much harder to remain faithful to it when the problems disappear and life becomes wonderful again.

Another "series" of Jesus' miracles. It is striking how different these four healings are. The case of the woman with the flow of blood is especially revealing: Jesus does nothing special here; the healing happens as a result of the meeting between her bold faith (the bleeding makes a person unclean, and she has no right to touch other people) and the power abiding in Jesus, as the Gospel according to Luke tells it, opening for us a glimpse into the mystery of the Lord's miracles.

The description of each of the other healings ends by mentioning how people respond to it. Of course, word about Jesus spreads; of course, those healed by Him prove unable to obey Him even out of gratitude; and of course, Christ's miracles, like His preaching, draw some people to Him and repel others. Jesus will answer the accusations that He is working with the prince of demons later (this will be discussed in chapter 12).

Let us quote a passage from a sermon by Anthony, Metropolitan of Sourozh, on the healing of the woman with a flow of blood. ‘I want to say one more thing: among those in need of help for the soul, there are often people who are not accustomed to church, to the way people behave and live within it, who struggle towards God by unfamiliar, perhaps unaccepted paths. Like this woman with a flow of blood, who touched the Saviour in the crowd, doing something inadmissible at that time, as though defiling him by her touch. And the Saviour said to her: Take courage! Your faith has saved you!.. How careful we must be not to say to a person, like the Pharisees, the scribes, those who live by the dead letter: Keep your need to yourself if you cannot approach God, approach us, in the proper way; how dare you struggle towards God in a way that so offends our habits?..<...> how we should treat those who, in their despair, throw themselves towards God along paths unfamiliar to us...’

It is hard to add anything to the bishop's words, but we will nevertheless venture to say that the hatred and hostility within the Church, hatred of those who think differently from us, is very dangerous. It is akin to fascism; it is evil, a terrible disease. But healing is found only in God, and until we turn to his words, we will remain ill, mortally ill. There is just one thing we want to say: people, read the Word of God.

The healing of the woman with the flow of blood is a very impressive miracle. The point is not even that, according to the rules, she was not supposed to touch anyone, yet dared to do so. In any case, we should not always use this example to justify our disregard for rules. This is not why the evangelist records the story, nor is this what Christ approves in her actions. What contrasts most sharply with the behavior familiar to us is that she truly needs the Lord desperately. All her hope is concentrated in Him, and all the strength of her spirit is directed toward attaining this touch. She truly can no longer live unless she touches the Lord Jesus.

It was precisely this need for God that earned the Lord’s praise. Compared with it, much in our “religious practice” will seem weak and, to use the term from Revelation, lukewarm. Perhaps what matters to the Lord above all is the strength and all-embracing nature of this need, burning within an ordinary person just like each of us.

The woman suffering from a flow of blood is healed by touching Christ. She is healed in passing, while Christ is on His way elsewhere, to the place where a man who believed Him had called Him. And then, when every minute is precious, the bleeding woman touches Christ.

To appreciate the degree of her boldness, one should remember that any bodily contact with someone bleeding was considered defiling. A person defiled by such a touch would not have been able to enter the house without purification procedures, so the woman's action looked not only insolent but selfish, for she could have disrupted the healing of the dying girl. And yet the woman risked publicly admitting that she had committed a forbidden act. And Christ not only does not rebuke her, but encourages her boldness as a manifestation of faith.

Apparently, there are situations when we have to take actions that contradict established ideas and norms of behavior. But the Lord can support our boldness if it is born of faith.

And no touch can defile Him who is Purity itself. Therefore the touch of Christ, who bore on Himself all the sins of the world, raised the ruler's daughter from her bed of illness, and raises us to life as well.

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.