NOTES for Mar 5:24-34

The woman with a hemorrhage, whose healing we read about in today’s Gospel, does something completely unlawful. Under Jewish law, blood defiles, and therefore the sick woman must keep away from devout people. All the more must she avoid the Temple and not draw near to God.

If one of the Pharisees had intercepted her as she forced her way through the crowd toward Jesus, she would have been condemned and perhaps severely punished. At the very least, she would have been thoroughly shamed: how dare you, so unclean, covered in sin and defilement, approach the Teacher! Yet He Himself tells the Pharisees that people like her, tax collectors and sinners, enter the Kingdom before the religious high achievers, because they possess one important quality: they need it desperately.