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Lent 2nd Sunday: The Woman with the Flow of Blood: Mark
5:25-44
Homily by Sr. Rebecca
Today we celebrate the Feast of the
Annunciation. Also we celebrate the healing of the Woman with the Flow of Blood
from the Gospel of Mark, which is usually taken today, the 2nd
Sunday of Lent. Those present at the services yesterday may have noticed that several
hymns were peppered among those of the Annunciation that recounted and commented
on this woman’s faith-driven heroic action.
Pondering these two events coming
together today has moved me to offer some insights about these two
extraordinary women: the Virgin Mary and this unnamed woman. What strikes me as
common in both of these Gospel stories are two women of enlightened faith. And they act upon their inner power at a time
when women were denied any personal power in deciding the course of their lives
in society at large.
In the story of the Annunciation,
God takes the initiative: Mary is invited by God to accept to be the recipient
and her womb to be the vessel of a stupendous, an unheard-of virginal pregnancy
with the longed-for Messiah. She is deeply disturbed, she pauses, she considers
and ponders, and only then does she engage her reason: she inquires. “How can
this come about, since I am a virgin?” No doubt she realizes that by accepting
this invitation she puts her very life at stake. The social consequence of such a pregnancy
could mean a loss of moral reputation, accused of adultery and guilty of death.
The angel tells her, “The Holy
Spirit will cover you with its shadow, and the child will be holy and will be
called Son of God..…and nothing is impossible with God.” The angel assures her in her fears: “The Lord
is with you.” That is all it takes for
her to step out in faith and open herself to this incredible role of mother of
God’s son, the future Messiah. She is
attuned to the word. She moves to a
different inner space: to one of trust,
a place where she claims her own innermost power to be open, ready to receive.
She is enabled to utter her fiat: “Be it done according to your word.” Mary is receptive, not passive – God does not
impose power upon her. God invites her
to own her own innermost power – a gift of autonomous free choice,
consent. She can say yes or no.
I turn now to this other woman: the
one in all three Gospels, with the stigma of a flow of blood.* Unlike Mary,
this woman was already ostracized by society.
She was deemed unclean by the religious authorities. The Gospel text says that when she had to
identity herself as the one who touched Jesus, she came forward in fear and
trembling. She knew that having touched
Jesus’ hem she had also made him unclean.
Can we stretch our imagination to her state of mind and the thoughts of those
around her? She had for 18 years internalized
society’s rejection of her as filthy, abhorrent, unfit to be seen, let alone to
be touching anyone.
It is against this social stigma
that this audacious woman acted. What
gave her this incredible courage? She is willing to struggle because she calls
forth from the depth of her being her own God-given power of choice. She
has that positive inner sense of self: who she really is, not what is mirrored
by others. She dis-identifies with what
others think of her. She embraced her own power and acted in faith on it. And in the intentional touching the hem of
Jesus’ cloak this woman released Jesus’ power, and she was healed, made whole. Amazing
grace: the power of faith to draw the very Power of God into our lives!!
Today we contemplate the
extraordinary faith of these two women: models of Christian discipleship: “they
who believed,” who trusted God’s word to them: Mary the one who accepts to bear
in her womb the Savior of the world, and this same Savior, Jesus, 30 years
later, saves the woman with the flow of blood, who by her faith is made whole –
she, God’s beloved child, one whom society rejects, one whose womb was
considered abominable. Her own womb,
symbolically, now bears the seed of the Divine within her; she now is called to
bring forth the Christ subsequently in her own life.
May these two women be the source of
our meditation today. At times we might
think it would be better if decisions were made for us, if someone would tell
us the answers, to inspire us to do this or not do that. But as part of our being made in the image
and likeness of God, we need to embody our own power; we need to take our own
responsibility for what we believe, for what we feel called to from the depth
of our being and go forward trusting in God’s word to each of us: “Do not be
afraid!” Throughout the Bible when there
are annunciation experiences, the messenger of God says, “Do not be
afraid!” Well, this always means that from
a human level, we are afraid and have every reason to be afraid!” It implies that we cannot go on our own
steam, our own brain and willpower. It
calls for silence and an empty space within to listen deeply from our
unencumbered hearts. From this space we
are enabled to hear and trust Jesus’ utterance to us: “I am with you always!”
*Added
Note:
All
three Synoptic Gospel writers have included this story of the woman with the
flow of blood. It signifies that in each
of writer’s early Christian communities it was considered important. We can understand this in the light of early
Christian marginalization by both the Jewish and Roman authorities.
NB: In the writing of this homily, I gleaned some
insights from an adapted article, “She Who Believed,” from one of Elizabeth
Fiorenza’s books, and I would like to express my gratitude.
Catacomb: Woman touching hem of Jesus’ Garment
Annunciation: The woman at Dura-Europos has secrets to
reveal.
As Peppard explains, the third-century Dura
Annunciation is based not on the Biblical Annunciation on the Gospel of James (a.k.a.
the Protevangelium of James),
a second-century apocryphal gospel that narrates the life of Mary up to and
including the birth of Jesus. According to the Gospel of James, Mary “took the pitcher and went forth
to fill it with water and lo! a voice saying, ‘Hail thou that art highly
favored, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women.’ And she looked
around on the right and on the left to see from where this voice could have
come.”
If Peppard’s
interpretation is correct, this would make the portrait at the Dura-Europos
church the earliest image of the Virgin Mary.
