Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

The purpose of Lent, of our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, is to draw ever closer to God—that we may know Him and love Him and one another more and more each day.  Sometimes, though, the wounds we carry within us are an obstacle to receiving God’s love and to loving Him and one another.  These wounds could include a fear of abandonment, shame, a feeling of defectiveness, a belief that one is unworthy of love or must earn love, and the hurts we experience in relationships when we are not loved as the Lord intended for us to be, among others.  

But as Pope Francis encouraged us last year, “this is how Jesus reveals the heart of God: He is always merciful towards all; He heals our wounds so that we can love each other.”  As we journey through Lent this year, I hope to share on this blog some of the healing stories from the Gospels.  I pray that they will lead us ever nearer to the Lord, that we may ask for, and receive, His healing of the wounds that keep us from knowing and loving Him and one another.  In the beautiful words of Pope Francis, “dearest friends, let us live this Lent as a time of healing.”  

This week, we will reflect on Mark 5:25-34:

“Now there was a woman who had suffered from a hemorrhage for twelve years; after long and painful treatment under various doctors, she had spent all she had without being any the better for it; in fact, she was getting worse.  She had heard about Jesus, and she came up through the crowd and touched His cloak from behind, thinking, ‘If I can just touch His clothes, I shall be saved.’  And at once the source of the bleeding dried up, and she felt in herself that she was cured of her complaint.  And at once aware of the power that had gone out from Him, Jesus turned round in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’  His disciples said to Him, ‘You see how the crowd is pressing round you; how can you ask, “Who touched me?”’  But He continued to look all round to see who had done it.  Then the woman came forward, frightened and trembling because she knew what had happened to her, and she fell at His feet and told Him the whole truth.  ‘My daughter,’ He said, ‘your faith has restored you to health; go in peace and be free of your complaint.’” 

The passage begins by explaining that the woman had suffered from this hemorrhage for a long time—twelve years.  She had tried nearly everything and depleted all of her resources in search of healing, but she was only getting worse.  In our lives, what are the wounds from which we have long suffered without improvement, no matter how hard we have tried? Let’s bring these areas to the Lord in prayer.  

With the Lord, one moment is enough for everything to change, and so we should never give up hope, even if we have been carrying these wounds for a very long time.  In John 5:1-9, we see a man who had an illness which lasted 38 years. This was no surprise to Jesus, as the Word of God says that Jesus “knew he had been in that condition for a long time.” Still, Jesus wanted to hear directly from the man and asked him whether he wanted to be well again.  The man responded by describing how he had tried to find healing on his own for so long.  But when he encountered, and brought his intention to, the Lord, Jesus cured him “at once.”  

At other times in our lives, the cure does not come at once, and instead, we are called to wait and trust that “the works of the Lord are all good, when the time is right, He gives whatever is needed” (Sirach 39:33).  For example, in John 11:1-44, we read of the resurrection of Lazarus.  The Word of God says that Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, yet when Jesus heard that Lazarus was ill, Jesus stayed where He was for two more days before going to raise Lazarus. 

In still other times, we may have the experience of the father in John 4:46-53, who asked Jesus to cure his son; Jesus told him that his son would live, but the father had to wait until he was on his way home to receive news of the healing that had occurred the moment Jesus had spoken to him.  We also may come to know only in hindsight the ways in which the Lord is working and healing during particular periods of our lives.  Regardless of the specific timing, what is important is that we bring our needs to the Lord and trust that all His “ways are grace and truth” (Tobit 3:2).

Returning to today’s passage, we see that the woman with the hemorrhage came to the Lord for healing because she had heard about Jesus.  Even as we need the Lord’s healing this Lent, we should be attentive to the opportunities the Lord is giving us to share Jesus with one another.  The Lord is not waiting for us to be fully healed before using us to bring healing to others.  This is good news!  In John 4:1-42, we see Jesus’s encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. She had had five husbands and was with a sixth man who was not her husband.  Whatever wounds she was carrying, at the end of the encounter, she was so inspired to tell people about Jesus that she left her water jar behind and hurried back to the town to tell people about Him.  From her testimony, they too came to Jesus, heard Him themselves, and believed in Him.     

In a beautiful cycle of grace, when we share Jesus, the Lord is freeing and healing not only the hearer but also us.  This is the sort of fast that pleases God, which Isaiah 58:6 describes as letting the oppressed go free and breaking all yokes.  As Galatians 5:1 reminds us, “Christ set us free, so that we should remain free.  Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be fastened again to the yoke of slavery,” and in Matthew 11:28-30, Jesus calls all those who labor and are overburdened to Him to find rest for their souls, since His yoke is easy and burden light.  When we engage in this fast pleasing to God, “your light will blaze out like the dawn and your wound be quickly healed over” (Isaiah 58:8). 

Because the woman with the hemorrhage had heard about Jesus, she came to Him for healing, touched his clothes, and “at once the source of the bleeding dried up, and she felt in herself that she was cured.”  In a moment, Jesus healed that from which she had suffered for the last 12 years.  She experienced Sirach 11:22—“in a moment God brings His blessing to flower.”  Isaiah 65:18 exhorts us to by joyful and glad at what the Lord is creating, for as Ezekiel 36:35 says, He can turn a wasteland into a garden of Eden.  This will happen in our lives too; “it is all God’s work” (2 Corinthians 5:18).   

After the woman was cured, Jesus asked who had touched his clothes, and the disciples said, “you see how the crowd is pressing round you; how can you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”  Sometimes we also may ask questions like this because we do not see the purpose behind why Jesus is working in a particular way.  In John 13:7, Jesus said, “at the moment you do not know what I am doing, but later you will understand.”  Here, Jesus did not have to ask the question in order to know who had touched His clothes, for “Jesus knew all people and . . . never needed evidence about anyone; He could tell what someone had within” (John 2:24-25).      

As the passage continues, though, we see that Jesus’s question gave the woman the opportunity to come to Him, fall at His feet, and tell Him the “whole truth.”  The Lord knows each of us so intimately.  As the psalmist explains, “you know every detail of my conduct.  A word is not yet on my tongue before you, Lord, know all about it . . . you knew me through and through, my being held no secrets from you” (Psalm 139:3-4, 14-15). 

But the Lord wants us to come to Him to tell Him the “whole truth” of our struggles and sufferings because He wants us to experience His presence, love, and healing, and ultimately freedom and joy, in the midst of those difficulties.  In the Gospel of John, Jesus promises that the truth will set us free and that if we ask in His name, we will receive, and our joy will be complete (John 8:32, 16:24).  We should not be discouraged if this takes time, as our weaknesses keep us close to Christ, and each time we return to Him, we receive His grace and hear His loving words, “my grace is enough for you” (2 Corinthians 12:9).  Therefore, as Lamentations 2:19 urges us, “pour your heart out like water in the Lord’s presence!”    

May the Lord grant each of us the grace to approach Him like the woman in today’s passage, sharing with Him the whole truth of the areas in our lives in need of healing.  May He also grant us, His sons and daughters, the faith to persevere in patience, trusting that no matter how long we have faced these afflictions, He will heal and restore us too!