23rd Sunday after Pentecost: He went in and took her by the hand; and the girl arose.

St. Jerome says, “When the ruler begs Jesus to raise his daughter from the dead, an eighth miracle begins. But lo!, a woman troubled with an issue of blood slips across the path of the procession and is healed, so that the ruler’s daughter loses this place and becomes the ninth miracle. Now, while our Lord was on His way to one person, He healed another. The apostles acted in the same way when they told the Jews, “To you it behooved us first to speak the word of God, but because you reject it and judge yourselves worthy of eternal life, behold we turn to the Gentiles.” 

The power of healing went out from Our Lord to cure the woman with the issue of blood, and it raised Jairus’ daughter from the dead. In the same way it will reach the two peoples of the Gentiles and the Jews, who are symbolized in this illness and death, and who will be saved by their faith in Christ. In fact, all the acts of physical healing and raising from the dead performed by our Lord are only symbols of our freedom from sin and resurrection to come. “I will bring back your captivity from all places,” says Jeremias in the Introit; “Thou hast turned away the captivity of Jacob,” adds the psalm; and the Gradual goes on, “Thou hast delivered us, O Lord, from them that afflict us.”

In the same strain the Alleluia and the Offertory psalm relate how from the depths of exile the two nations have cried to the Lord imploring Him to hear their prayer, and how “with the Lord there is plenteous redemption, and He shall redeem Israel from all its iniquities”.