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The following is a passage from the gospel of Mark:

One of the synagogue officials, named Jairus, came forward. Seeing him he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, saying, “My daughter is at the point of death. Please, come lay your hands on her that she may get well and live.” He went off with him, and a large crowd followed him and pressed upon him.

There was a woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years. She had suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors and had spent all that she had. Yet she was not helped but only grew worse. She had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak. She said, “If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured.” Immediately her flow of blood dried up. She felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. Jesus, aware at once that power had gone out from him, turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who has touched my clothes?” But his disciples said to him, “You see how the crowd is pressing upon you, and yet you ask, ‘Who touched me?’” And he looked around to see who had done it. The woman, realizing what had happened to her, approached in fear and trembling. She fell down before Jesus and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction.”

 — Mark 5:22-34

The following is an excerpt in response to this gospel passage from Selected Sermons; Homilies written by St. Peter Chrysologus who is known as the “Doctor of Homilies”.

While she was blushing over her wound and with so much concern fearing Him as God, the woman found her faith getting darkened. Clouds of confusion obscured the light in her mind. Therefore, the voice of her questioning Lord, like a salutary wind, drove the clouds away, dispersed the mists, and enlightened her faith. It made her who had recently been in darkness of the night brighter than the very sun. For, she shines throughout the whole world, is resplendent in the whole of the Church, and is glorious among its members. Is she, then, less than a sun? If she had returned unseen—give me leave to say it—she would have escaped her Physician, not tested Him. She could have ascribed what she obtained to herself rather than to her Healer. She would have believed that she had drawn her cure from the hem of His garment, not from His penetrating understanding. For, what would she have believed to be truly his whose power she had experienced in her own case, but which in her wish she had deemed to be something outside him?

Before her cure, perhaps it was because of her shame that she kept herself hid, and because of her humility that she thought herself unworthy. But after her cure, why did she not of her own accord run up to give him thanks, and honor, and glory for such a great deed? After she saw that the Lord persisted in his questioning, that the disciples said that jostling from the crowd was the reason why he had been touched, and that she could not remain hidden, after fear and trembling in her own conscience began to trouble her, she came into the midst of them all. She wanted to profess public belief in him whom she had privately recognized as her Physician, and to adore him as God, and to become herself a remedy for sickness as great as hers, both to present and future people. As the Evangelist narrates: But the woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what had happened within her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth…

Pray, brethren, that…we may die in our sins in order to live in Christ.

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