Our humility is the source of our healing.
Today's Gospel passage illustrates this perfectly. Jesus performs two shocking miracles and in both cases, the key that released the power of his grace was humility.
Jairus, the synagogue official was humble: he knew that saving his daughter was something beyond his own powers. This is clearly demonstrated by how he approaches Jesus.
When he made his way into the Lord's presence, he wasn't aloof, sceptical, and argumentative, like so many Pharisees and Sadducees. Instead, St Mark tells us that he "fell at his [Jesus'] feet and pleaded earnestly with him."
The synagogue official was an important person in the city. He was used to being in charge, used to having the right answers and helping other people solve their problems. But faced with the mortal sickness of his child, Jairus remembered that there was a higher power in the universe than him, and he humbled himself before the Lord, and the Lord "went off with him" to work a miracle.
The woman with the haemorrhage was humble too; her sickness had made her so.
She was not a powerful leader in society. In fact, her sickness made her an outcast. She was "unclean," according to the Mosaic Law. And she was risking her very life by fighting her way through the crowd, touching all those people, and making them unclean too.
Where did she get the strength to overcome those obstacles? From her humility. For twelve years she had been seeking a solution to her chronic, humiliating, and debilitating health issue, paying for all the latest technology and all the most highly recommended doctors.
And so she discovered the vast limits of human ingenuity, and turned instead to the limitless mercy of a much higher power. She risked everything just to touch a tassel of the Lord's cloak; and strength far beyond her limited human powers flowed out from him and healed her.
The humility of these two unforgettable Gospel characters opened their hearts to faith in Jesus Christ. And faith unleashed God's saving power in their lives. And God's saving power healed their hopelessness, strengthened their weakness, and enlightened their darkness.
Our humility is also the source of true strength.
The humble person is strong in the same way that a shipwrecked person is strong. After a shipwreck, you will cling with all your might to a piece of board that will keep you afloat. You will not let it go no matter what, because you know that without it, you will drown.
That's humility: recognition of our dependence on the cross of Christ to save us from spiritual shipwreck, and that recognition inspires us with unbreakable courage.
During the French Revolution the revolutionary government took over the Church, and Catholics who refused to go along with the revolutionary agenda were imprisoned or executed.
In this difficult situation, one peasant farmer named Jean Chantebel gave an eloquent example of the strength of humility. His minimal education had come entirely from the Church. The book he treasured most was his little catechism. He loved to read it over in the evenings and savour its truths.
When he refused to attend the revolutionary church, the authorities searched his house and discovered his dog-eared Catholic catechism. Possessing the book was considered treason, and they arrested him.
The local revolutionary committee erected a pyre in the town square, gathered the townspeople around, and produced their prisoner, the faithful farmer.
They read the sentence passed on him and his book, laid the book on top of the large pile of wood, placed a burning torch in the prisoner's hand, and ordered him to set the catechism on fire.
He responded: "I will never do it. That book contains the principles of my faith, and you will never get me to renounce it." One of the committee members took the torch and applied its flame to the arrested man's own hand.
Chantebel replied to this gesture by saying, "You may burn not only my hand, but my whole body before I will consent to commit an act unworthy of my religion." In the end, they paraded him around town to humiliate him, but no storm of persecution could loosen his grip on the saving wood of Christ's glorious cross.
Humility is the only door through which God's grace can reach our hearts and set us on the path of true happiness.
This leaves us, logically speaking, with a question: What can we do to increase our humility?
St Paul gives us one possibility in today's Second Reading. In this Letter, he is encouraging the Christians in the prosperous Greek city of Corinth to be generous in helping the Christians in Jerusalem, who are suffering from a severe economic downturn.
He points out that sharing with others the gifts we have received from God's providence is one way we can follow Christ more closely. Jesus, in fact, was the first one who took the privileges he had received from the Father and surrendered them by becoming a man in the Incarnation. And by lowering himself in that way, he made it possible for us to share in those privileges, to become real children of God.
This is what St Paul is referring to when he writes: "... though he [Christ] was rich, for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich."
Christ, the eternal, divine Son of God, coming down from heaven and raising us up to share in his divinity is the perfect model of humility. We can follow his example by reaching out to others just as he has reached out to us.
Visiting the sick and imprisoned, feeding the hungry, praying for sinners, encouraging the discouraged, comforting the troubled, inviting sinners to repent...
By "gracious actions" like these (as St Paul calls them) we reproduce in our souls the humility that Christ taught us. And doing that opens the door for his transforming grace to come and make us into the wise, joyful, courageous, and fruitful saints that we were created to be.