Thought for the Day – 1 July – The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B – Today’s Gospel Mark 5:21-43.
The woman healed and the girl raised, have some things in common:
they are female; they are both called daughter; and they are linked by the number twelve.
The number is a sign of the restoration of the twelve tribes of Israel at the end of time, a sign of the Messiah and the eschaton – the last things, the final event in the Divine plan.
Israel is also known as the daughter or even, the bride of God (Hos 2:19-21).
In these miracles today, Jesus shows that He has come to bring daughter Israel to health and full life. The healings that connect these daughters of Israel are signs of the spiritual wholeness and the destruction of death that the Messiah brings. And since we know that “God does not delight in the death of the living” (Wis 1:13), we know that new life for the restored people of Israel, was a sign of the offer extended to the whole world. Wherever death comes to destroy, faith in Christ’s power is sufficient, even unto death.
The divine power leaves Jesus in order to flow into us on the Cross and in the Eucharist.
“She touched the hem of His garment, she approached Him in a spirit of faith, she believed and she realised that she was cured… so we too, if we wish to be saved, should reach out in faith to touch the garment of Christ” ...St Ambrose (340-397 Father & Doctor), Expositio Evangelii sec. Lucam, VI, 56. 58.
(via Thought for the Day - 1 July - The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B - Today's Gospel Mark 5:21-43.)