Have you ever wondered in a real sense what it means to be saved?  Maybe not, unless you’ve come against a situation in which you became aware of how much you actually needed saving.  Although the word “saved” appears throughout the Gospels, we probably miss that the full meaning of the Greek word sozo includes healed, restored, made whole.  Today’s wonderful Gospel about two women who were healed illuminates God’s saving ways and invitation to abundant life.  Jesus’ saving action for Jairus’ daughter and the woman with the hemorrhage extended way beyond restoring the one to life and relieving twelve years of suffering for the other.
                 
As you look more deeply at the merciful healing of Jairus’ daughter, try to imagine the fear and panic that drove the synagogue official to literally fall on the feet of Jesus pleading for help.  More than his daughter was at risk of death.  Even though the message is received that she has died, Jesus urged Jairus not to be afraid and have faith.  Arriving at the house, Jesus removed from the daughter’s room everyone who was weeping over her death.  Taking her hand, He simply told the girl to get up and she did.  The story ends with Jesus instructing them to give her something to eat.  Only someone who is alive and well stands up and eats.  Jairus and his wife were restored also, and could walk out the door and join the others.  The whole family was saved.
                 
The healing of the woman with the hemorrhage proceeded quite differently.  The fact of her existence as ritually unclean dictated her approach, but did not damage the strength of her faith.  The woman was silent and unobtrusive, merely reaching out to touch Jesus’ cloak.  Imagine her straining to get close enough.  It is her body, rather than her eyes, that immediately perceived the healing.  When Jesus recognized that something occurred, she humbly told Him.  The woman could easily have slipped away without being found out, but like Jairus’ daughter, she too stood erect.  Jesus told the woman Daughter, your faith has saved you, and tellingly added, Go in peace and be cured of your affliction. 
                 
Despite their differences, these two stories suggest that healing and salvation occur within relationship and in the presence of authentic faith, not through a magic formula.  Our particular faith affects the healing we receive.  Hopefully, after we’ve fallen on our knees and begged, we truly recognize that we’ve been saved.  Yet even then, when we feel we’ve been healed, Jesus offers more.  Most of all we are invited and impelled to live as one who has been healed, one who is no longer dead.  Not returned to what we were before, but we become the new creation St. Paul speaks about.  Jesus is the authority, the One who saves, in the fullest sense of the word, and declares us healed, but it is up to us to eat, to be healed, to walk upright in the truth of our salvation and all that it graces us with and demands.