In today’s gospel (Mark 5:21-43) we hear of two healings by Jesus.  To me the most interesting thing about these events is how Jesus attributes healing to faith.  He tells the woman afflicted with hemorrhages “your faith has saved you, go in peace”.  He tells Jairus, the father of the dying child, “do not be afraid, just have faith”.  In both cases, faith in Jesus led to very positive outcomes and a transformation of sickness and death to new life.

It is the same for us.  With faith in Jesus – with certainty that God loves us, that He cares for us, that He can be trusted even in times of turmoil and despair, and that His sacrifice saves us in the end – we can be brought from a place of anxiety, confusion, fear, and affliction to a place of encouragement, courageousness, peace, and well-being.  

Like the hemorrhaging woman and Jairus we just need to reach out to Jesus and allow his power to touch us and to empower us.   Like these two individuals who fought the crowds to get to Jesus, we need to make encountering Christ the number one priority in our lives. We need to put aside our “crowded” lives and those things that “crowd out” God so that we can encounter him on a daily basis.

God created us for this encounter, for us to be in communion with Him.  All we need to do is dispose ourselves to Him and allow Him to touch us, to allow Him to fill us with His peace and love, to allow him to transform our lives.