Monday, Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

The sense of touch is to the fore in today’s gospel reading. A synagogue official approaches Jesus, bowing low in front of him, and asks him to lay his hands upon his daughter who has just died. He believed that if Jesus touched his daughter, she would be brought from death to life and restored to her family and community. A woman who had suffered with a flow of blood for twelve years came up behind Jesus and touched his cloak. She believed that if she touched Jesus, she would be healed of her living death, and restored to the synagogue community. The faith of both the synagogue official and of the woman excluded from the synagogue because of her condition was vindicated. Jesus brought the official’s daughter from death to life and healed the woman of her isolating condition. The synagogue official allowed Jesus to lay his hands on his daughter and the woman laid her hands upon Jesus and in both situations life triumphed over death. The risen Lord continues to touch our lives in a life-giving way in responses to our pleas for help, as he touched Jairus’ daughter. In the words of today’s first reading, he is ‘the gate of heaven’, the gate through whom the life of heaven enters our world. The Lord who touches our lives also invites us to reach out and touch him, as the woman did in the gospel reading. We touch him when we seek his face in prayer. We touch him when we lovingly touch the broken and isolated of our world. Whenever we reach out to touch the Lord, we will discover that he is already reaching out to touch our lives. In seeking him, we discover, as Zacchaeus did, that he is seeking us with an even greater sense of urgency, ‘I must stay at your house today’.