Jesus goes beyond the customs and religious sensibilities of his people. He reacts favorably to a forbidden touch and challenges death to give back a life.

Faith can come from unexpected sources. The people who ask Jesus for healing in the gospel were not folks, by the standards of their day, whose appeal would be foreseen or likely to succeed.

Earlier this year I sat and watched my father die. There’s not much we can do for the people we love in this hour but pray and be present. I recited all the mysteries of the rosary, all the mysteries of life and love and suffering, during the weeks before his death.

Generosity, Saint Paul tells the Corinthians, has a lot to do with equality. Because you have more, and others are in need, it makes sense to balance things out—to take from your surplus to make up for another’s deficit.

Daniel and his sister Daniela have been blind since birth, the consequence of a genetic disease. They were born in a rural area of Ghana, where resources are scarce and disease runs rampant. Before Daniel reached his teen years, his father died, and his mother struggled to keep herself and her four children alive.

In prayer we call upon God to respond to our needs, to help us turn from destructiveness and embrace the good.

Who has touched my clothes? When the woman with a flow of blood touched Jesus, he felt “that power had gone out of him.” Only he seemed to notice the gesture, but he wanted to see who had done it.

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present. —Albert Camus (1913–1960)