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I’ve been waiting for this Sunday gospel reading about the woman with the hemorrhage of blood since last August.
Last September, I was sure of what I was going to write. I knew what my story was.
I had bled for most of 2022 and 2023 (and before that too, but, you know, a story needs a clean-cut beginning). So, in August of last year, when I was 40 years old, I had a hysterectomy. I was the woman with the hemorrhage of blood. I had suffered under doctors; I never had a diagnosis and I had gotten worse and worse. Then I had surgery and I was better.
Post-hysterectomy, I had a diagnosis. I had adenomyosis, the lining of my uterus had grown in the muscular wall. I would never have stopped bleeding until I was either post-menopausal or I had my uterus removed.
I was cured! My hair grew back. My fingernails are stronger than they’ve been in twenty years. My body, no longer using every available resource on a misfiring menstrual cycle, could finally rest.
This is what I thought I would be able to write today. I had this story all wrapped up with a pretty bow and I was ready to share how my life paralleled the unnamed woman in today’s Gospel reading.
But, friends, rather suddenly, I’m not well.
About three weeks ago I started having hot flashes. I’ve had two so far as I’ve written this. I refuse to count how many I have in a day, because it’s too maddening. They wake me in the middle of the night and stop my train of thought during the day. It’s not necessarily the heat rising from me that’s getting to me; it’s the panic that I drop into as the episode starts. And then there’s the sleep deprivation caused by waking up throughout the night with that “something’s not quite right” feeling only to discover that my body is on fire.
My hormones are cattywampus, again. Still. Or maybe both?
So, I’m back in my routine of blood tests and medical appointments and trying to get it all done in the right order so that I don’t waste time at appointments where nothing can get done and my husband trying so hard to support me and do whatever he can to move the process along a little faster than glacial pace.
Honestly, I normally wouldn’t share this. Not because it’s too personal or too serious. The hot flashes are mostly an annoyance and lots and lots of woman have them. With everything else I’ve been through it means that I still am not well, but it didn’t seem to rise to the level of meaning needed for a reflection.
And then this reading came up in the liturgical cycle.
I clung to this passage during the years that I bled. I really thought after the hysterectomy that the next time we had this reading I would be able to apply it literally to myself. I was the woman with the hemorrhage and I was healed. I prayed with this passage so often. I begged Jesus to heal me as I cried over and over when yet another treatment not only didn’t work but left me even more energy deprived, disappointed, and hormonally imbalanced than I already was. I hoped for healing that seemed so far away.
I thought I had gotten the tidy ending to my story. I no longer bleed.
But I’m still suffering.
Maybe you are, too. We’re still reaching out to touch the edge of Jesus’ cloak.
This is what it looks like to live out in real time the realized eschatology of Scripture. Our salvation in Christ is (present tense!) ours, right now, renewing us in this moment. And our salvation is also not yet fully attained.
I am both saved and in need of saving. I am both healed and in need of healing. I have reached out and touched the edge of Jesus’ cloak and I am still reaching.
What is the story of the woman with the hemorrhage of blood meant to show us anyway? Our miraculous God can always and instantly cure terrible illness, but what are the spiritual realities this story point towards beyond physical healing? The physical reveals the spiritual truth. Few of us get the miraculous physical healing, but the spiritual truth it reveals is available to all of us.
The unnamed woman in today’s story led a life of total ostracization. Under strict Jewish purity laws, the hemorrhage of blood meant that the woman could not touch or be touched by another person. No person had touched her in twelve years. But worse still, she could not enter the Temple for worship. She had been cut off from God.
I’m the woman with the hemorrhage, but I’m also not her and I never will be. Although I suffer and am mystified by the delays in my healing, the story has less power over me. What the woman in today’s reading really needed was Jesus. The only way to stop the suffering of loneliness and lovelessness (because that’s what it means to be cut off from God) is Jesus.
I live within a New Covenant. So, I have bled (and bled and bled) and I still suffer, but I have never been alone. One day, two thousand years ago, Jesus allowed his cloak to be touched. Jesus allows the unnamed woman and me and all of us to reach out and touch Him, which means I never stand outside of love. Through Jesus, suffering has been taken into the very Heart of God and redeemed, so I will reside there or as close to there as I can get.
This doesn’t mean I don’t suffer. This doesn’t mean I need to dry my tears and just be grateful. It means my tears exist in His sight, always. It means He never wants me to stop reaching out and He is always there when I reach to touch his cloak.
Readings for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B) on the USCCB Website
Beautiful! Thank you for sharing your story and for your message of faithful hope amidst trials!