ALL WHO TOUCHED HIS CLOAK WERE HEALED

Mark 6:53-56

The text of today’s Gospel presents to us people looking for Jesus, searching him everywhere. It is at a time when Jesus and his disciples have just landed at Gennesaret, and people at once recognized him. Coming from all parts, they were bringing their sick. What impels people to search for Jesus is not only the desire to encounter him, to be with him, but rather the desire to be cured of their sicknesses.

The gospel shows us that Jesus’ mission is to teach and to cure. Right from the beginning of his apostolic activity Jesus speaks to the people about the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God. And wherever he finds people who listen to him, he speaks and transmits the Good News of God and cures the sick, in all places: in the Synagogues, in the house of friends, walking on the street with his disciples, along the beach, sitting in a boat, in the desert where he took refuge, in the squares of the villages and of the cities, to cure and to teach, that is what Jesus did the most. Many of the people Jesus healed are from outcast categories: blinds, lepers, deaf, dumb, gentiles. The effect of these cures, therefore, was not merely to bring physical healing; but rather to renew the sense of community membership; to bring people back in the community.

This is what impelled people to look for him everywhere. Jesus attracted people through words and deeds. People saw in Jesus the revelation of what they longed to see. He not only spoke of God, but he also revealed God himself. He communicated something of what he himself lived and experienced. He not only announced the Good News. He himself was a proof, a living witness of the Kingdom of God.

Jesus’ healing must be seen clearly as bestowing the gift of wholeness, to those who lacked it, bringing not only physical health but renewing membership of the covenantal people of YHWH. This happens only when we surrender ourselves to Jesus in total trust, in total faith. The gospel says: they beg Jesus even to touch the tassel of His cloak. Do you approach him with expectant faith? The apparition of the Virgin Mary to Bernadette Soubirous made of Lourdes a place for pilgrims to renew their faith and to find healing. As we commemorate Our Lady of Lourdes, Let us pray through the intercession of Mary that we may have faith, an expectant faith to only touch the cloak and to be healed.