Courage, My Daughter!

“Jesus turned around, saw her, and he said to her: ‘Courage, my daughter, your faith has saved you!’”

In today’s reading (Matthew 9:18-26) a woman in the crowd around Jesus touches the fringe of his cloak. She isn’t supposed to do that. She wasn’t even allowed to be in a crowd, because, according to the Law, her sickness made her impure. According to that Law everything she touched became unclean as well. But she took the risk, thinking “even if I only touch his cloak I shall be saved.”

At the moment of that touch everything else around Jesus seems to fall away. It doesn’t count anymore. What counts is that woman and no one else. Jesus turns around, looks at her, and says to her, “Courage, my daughter, your faith has saved you!” And for some strange reason, Jesus seems to praise faith even more than love in the gospels.

She was for that instant the only one who counted for him. He gave his whole self to her. W.B. Yeats once wrote: “The love of God is infinite for every human soul, because every human soul is unique; no other can satisfy the same need in God.” It is that unique love of God for each of us that should make us halt in the crowd we live in and look at one another and at ourselves with greater care. God loves you infinitely at this moment. Do you believe?