Homily for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time July 1, 2018
Fr. Albert St. Peter’s, New Iberia
“Who touched me?” What an absurd question. Who hasn’t touched Jesus? In the Gospel, the crowd are all touching him. Now, nearly a billion people touch Jesus every week when they receive the Eucharist at Mass. “Who touched me?” he asks. Why does it matter? Being touched by people is a part of life and, most of the time, it doesn’t mean anything. So, forget the touch and just move on, right?
Wrong. Touch does matter. True, most people touch and are touched by other people a thousand times a day without a second thought. But, it is also true that a single touch can dramatically alter our entire lives and sometimes, it can destroy us. The entire #metoo movement testifies to the significance of an unwelcome touch, to the invasion of a person’s dignity and value. We’ve seen great outage that people in power, sometimes even within the Catholic Church, have used that power to touch the lives of others in a horrifying way.
But touch can also be a powerful force for good. When Pope Francis saw a man suffering from a severe deformity, he touched him, he embraced him and manifested the love of God to that man, and to the watching world. There are countless stories like that in the history of the Church: Mother Teresa, John Paul II, St. Francis and many other unknown saints have testified to the power of the human touch.
So, what is the difference? What changes whether or not a touch brings healing or harm or nothing at all? With Jesus Christ, at least, the biggest difference should be obvious to us. What does the bleeding woman have that no one else in the crows seems to have? She has faith. She genuinely believes in the holiness and power of Jesus Christ. Even more amazingly, she believes that even the tiniest moment of contact is all she needs for him to heal her.
Touching the tassel of his cloak might not seem like a big deal, but it was. For Jews, blood is a sign of life and death. Someone who is bleeding is ritually unclean; they are not allowed to go to the temple or join in at worship. When bleeding stops, you wait a bit, take a special bath, and you’re back to being clean. But this woman never stopped bleeding. Even worse, being ritually unclean was kind of contagious. If you touch another person, they become unclean too. So, for twelve years, every time this woman touched somebody, she made their life more difficult.
So, when this woman touches Jesus, she risks insulting him and interrupting his ability to go about his usual way of life. But, her faith sees past that risk. Her faith in his holiness is so strong, that she somehow knows not to worry about ritual impurity. When Jesus asks, “who touched me?” he’s really asking, “who touched me with faith?”
Then, when he gets to the house, Jesus touches the little girl, he takes her hand and raises her from the dead. Why? Because her father came to him with faith. The message should be clear to us. To touch Jesus with faith leads to healing and it leads to life.
But what about you? How many times have you touched Jesus? How many times have you touched him in the Eucharist? Have you been healed? Not every healing is physical and Jesus didn’t come to replace doctors, but he did come to heal us. Yes, Jesus raised the girl from the dead and saved the woman, but both of those people are dead now. Yet, the deeper spiritual healing lasted. God-willing, if they kept the faith we see in the Gospel, they are dead, but they are also alive in Christ. Their bodies will be returned to them at the end of time.
“Who touched me?” Was it you? Where’s your faith? I’ve been distributing communion for ten years now and I can tell you, there are far too many people who seem to be completely uninterested in what they are receiving. Especially when we’ve been touching Jesus our whole lives, its so easy to take it for granted, to be like the crowd pressing on Jesus, touching him but remaining unchanged.
So, let me be blunt about it. You can receive communion every week – even every day – for your whole life and still never know Jesus. You can receive communion every day and still end up going to Hell. When Jesus speaks to the woman who touched him he says, “your faith has saved you.” Your faith. We must receive the sacraments with faith to be saved. Missing Mass on Sunday is a mortal sin, but coming to Mass without faith isn’t really much better. The music won’t save us. The sign of peace won’t save us. The homily won’t save us. Seeing the priest’s face won’t save us. Not even the Eucharist will save us if we go without faith. When you say “amen,” you may as well stand up and swear an oath in a courthouse. It is “amen” to the reality of the Eucharist, to the reality of the Catholic Church, to your faith in Jesus.
Great, so how do we do that? How do we touch Jesus with real faith? How can we be healed? Learn from Jairus and this woman. Both of them make up their minds before they get to Jesus. They resolve to trust Him, to have faith. Do that. Do it often. Pray for the gift of faith and strive to trust him. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but we always have the simple prayer “I believe, help my unbelief!”
We also have to live that faith in our lives. Daily prayer. Learning more about our faith. Staying connected to the community of faith. Confession is a great gift for this. The little girl is raised from the dead not by her own prayer, but because her faith prayed for her. When you come to confession, the priest is like Jairus… your father asking Jesus to save you. And he raises you from the dead by forgiving your sins… and sin is worse than physical death.
Then, these two people show humility. Both of them fling themselves at Jesus’ feet. They don’t touch Jesus like they’re taking a burger from a drive-thru window. Learn from them. Show real reverence in the Church. A full genuflection in front of the tabernacle. Shoe genuine attention when you receive communion. It hurts my faith to see people being careless. It helps my faith to see your reverence.
Keep coming to Jesus with faith. Then, at the end of time, when he asks, “who touched me?” we can each say, “I did, Lord, because I believe.”