The film Philomena is based on the true story of Philomena Lee, who became pregnant as a young girl and was sent to a convent where, after her baby was born, she remained for some years working in the laundry. Her toddler son was taken from her and given for adoption and the film tells the story of her 50-year search for him led by a journalist. He is finally traced to a family in the United States where they discovered that he had died some years previously. They learned from friends that he had worked at a senior level in the Reagan and Bush administrations. They also discovered that he had come to Ireland in search of his mother just as she searched for him but both were frustrated in their endeavours.
Tomorrow’s gospel reading highlights the vulnerability of women and how Jesus showed his concern for them. It is an issue he addresses several times in the course of his ministry. The reading tells the story of a bleeding woman and a young girl who are opposites in several ways. The woman is without social, religious or economic standing or influence. She is even unnamed and the disciples urge Jesus not to delay for there was a more important person to be looked after, the 12-year-old daughter of an important man who is desperately concerned for his child: “Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” This child has everything the woman hasn’t: someone to speak up for her, wealth, status, and sympathy.
The bleeding woman persists and breaks social convention by touching the cloak of Jesus. He respects her courage and her faith and very significantly addresses her as “daughter”.
There is a contemporary ring to this story given the current debate on the health service. It raises the issue of privileged access and delayed and inadequate services. It also touches on the delicate issue of ageism and the care of the elderly. Jesus rejects the assumption that if there is a winner there has to be a loser. Healing for the rich does not come at the expense of the poor or vice versa. The woman is healed and the child is healed.
In Christ and Women, Dorothy Hosie, an American author, comments on the issues raised in this reading. "It is true that Jesus said comforting things to women. He called a girl of 12 'little darling' when he took her small hand and drew her back from death. He speaks to and of mothers and widows. I am not sure that the most beautiful story in the whole testament is not that of the old woman, bowed these 18 years in spirit and body with no beauty surely on her face and probably neither rich nor clever; yet one who had come to a place where she could meet with God. He had to 'call' for her for she would not think that a young man of 33 could seek out herself. But she was in need and that was good enough for the good shepherd. The courtesy of Christ to women goes far deeper than race or appearance and with that he has raised the nature of his fellow men. Indeed when I have heard good men tell an audience that they ought to be grateful to Jesus for he has raised the status of women, I shrink, surprised by their blindness. It is more than a century since slavery was abolished. Would we wish to go back to it even if we could? Do we not pray to be delivered from the burden of knowing that some of our labour is still slavery? When we freed slaves we ourselves were freed just as much as they."