13. Sunday in Year B in Ordinary Time Mk 5,21-43

Let yourself be healed and look with your heart. In today’s Gospel (Mk 5, 21-43), Jesus encounters our two most dramatic situations – death and illness. He frees two people from them: a little girl who dies just as her father goes to ask Jesus for help, and a woman who has been bleeding for many years. Jesus lets himself be touched by our pain and death and performs two signs of healing to tell us that neither pain nor death has the last word. It tells us that death is not the end. He overcomes this enemy from which we cannot be freed. However, when the disease is always discussed, let’s focus on the second sign, the woman’s healing. More than her health, her feelings were at risk: she was bleeding and was therefore considered impure according to the mentality of the time. She was relegated to the margins of society, unable to have stable relationships, husband, family, and normal social relations because she was impure, she had a disease that made her unclean. She lived alone with a broken heart. What is the worst disease in life? Cancer? Tuberculosis? A pandemic? No. The worst disease in life is lack of love; it is the inability to love. This poor woman was sick from loss of blood, but as a result of a lack of love, she could not associate with others. And the most important thing is the healing of the feeling. But how to find him? We can think about our feelings. Are they sick…? Jesus can heal them. The story of this nameless woman, in which we can all see ourselves (let’s call her “the nameless woman”), is exemplary. In the text, it is written that she was treated many times and “spent everything she had, but nothing helped her; on the contrary, it got worse and worse” (v. 26). How often do we,, too, resort to the wrong means to feed the lack of love? Success and money make us happy, but you can’t buy love; it’s free. We resort to the virtual, but love is concrete. We do not accept ourselves as we are and hide behind the tricks of our exterior, but love is not an appearance.

Furthermore, we look to magicians and shamans for solutions, only to end up penniless and peaceless like that woman. Finally, she chooses Jesus and rushes into the crowd to touch his cloak. This means that the woman is seeking direct, physical contact with Jesus. Especially at this time, we understood how important contacts and relationships are. It is the same with Jesus: sometimes we are satisfied with following specific regulations and repeating prayers, often it is parroting, but the Lord is waiting for us to meet him, to open our hearts to him, to touch his cloak like the woman, so that he can heal us. Because when we enter into an intimate relationship with Jesus, we are healed in our feelings

This is what Jesus wants. We even read that even though the crowd pressed him, he looked around for those touching him closely. The disciples said to him: “But look how the crowd is pressing on you…”. Not: “Who touched me?” This is the view of Jesus: there are many people, but he looks for a face and a heart full of faith. He does not look at the whole as we do but at the person. He does not stop at the wounds and mistakes of the past but goes beyond sins and prejudices. Each of us has a story, and we know the bad things in our story deep down. But Jesus looks at them to heal them. Instead, we like to look at the bad things in others… How many times when we talk, we fall into chatter, which consists of talking bad about others, “pulling the skin off” them? But look what a life horizon it is. Not like Jesus, who always looks to save us, looks to absolutely! Please provide me with the text from which you’d like me to continue writing. Ay, to goodwill and not to our bad past. Jesus transcends sin. Jesus transcends prejudice. It does not stop at appearances but goes to the heart of the matter. And he heals the very one whom everyone rejected, the impure. Jesus’ style was closeness, compassion, and tenderness: “Daughter…” He kindly calls her “daughter” (v. 34) and praises her faith, restoring her confidence.

Sister, brother, let Jesus look at your heart and heal it. I have to do it, too: let Jesus look at my heart and heal it. And if you have already experienced his kind, look at yourself, imitate him, and do what he did. Look around you: you will see that many people around you feel hurt and lonely; they need to feel loved – add to the step. Jesus asks you to look at them from the outside and with your heart so that you do not judge them but accept them. Let’s stop judging others. Jesus asks us to look non-judgmentally. We open our hearts to receive others. Because only love heals life.

May Our Lady, Comforter of the Suffering, help us to caress the wounds in our hearts that we encounter on our journey. And don’t judge, don’t condemn the personal or social reality of others. God loves everyone! Don’t judge, let others live and try to treat yourself with love.