By the time we reach maturity, we have also lost some vital, life-giving parts of ourselves. By the time we get to possess ourselves, all of us have been wounded, shamed in our enthusiasm, and parts of our bodies and our souls have died and turned cold. By the time we get to be more fully in possession of ourselves we are no longer whole.
And this bitterly limits how well we can love and especially how fully we can give life. In the gospels we are told, within a single story, how Jesus cured two women who, on the surface, seem to have very little in common. The story runs this way:
Jesus is approached by a man named Jairus, who asks him to come and cure his daughter who is thirteen years old. As Jesus is making his way to Jairus’ house, hemmed in by a curious crowd, a woman who, we are told, had been suffering from internal haemorrhaging for twelve years and had spent all her money on doctors without getting any better, approaches him surreptitiously, saying to herself: “If I but touch the hem of his garment, I will be healed!” She does just that and, the gospels tell us, instantly the flow of blood stopped. Touching Jesus did for her what doctors couldn’t do, it stopped her internal haemorrhaging.
Then, as Jesus is approaching Jairus’ house, he is told that the man’s daughter is already dead, but he enters the house anyway, goes to the young girl’s bed, takes her by the hand, and brings her back to life.
What these two women have in common is this: For different reasons, both are unable to get pregnant and give life; the young girl, because she dies at puberty, just as she has the radical possibility of getting pregnant, and the other woman, because the forces inside her that are meant to give life are damaged and haemorrhaging, making it impossible for her to hold a pregnancy. What Jesus does is give back to both women the possibility of giving life, in one case by stopping the flow of blood and in the other by starting it.
We all need a similar miracle: By the time we’re finally ready to give life some deep parts of us have already died and are too cold and lifeless to ever become pregnant. As well, like the woman whose internal bleeding makes it impossible for her to get pregnant, we too are wounded in ways that have us forever haemorrhaging out the life forces we need in order to give life. Parts of us have died and parts of us have been wounded and we are forever haemorrhaging in body, heart, and soul. It’s hard for us to give life.
Only by touching some higher power, and this is most easily done inside a community, can we actually change our lives. Therapy too is helpful to a point, but only to a point. In the end, the power to give life can only be restored to us through grace and community, through letting a power beyond give us something that we cannot give to ourselves. Then, and only then, will those parts of us that are dead or diseased begin again to give life. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Stopping the Haemorrhaging by Touching the Hem of the Garment” July 2006]
