We are all familiar with the story found in the gospels of Mark and Luke about the woman with an issue of blood. As you recall in this story, Jesus had been summoned by Jairus, whose daughter was dying, this 12-year-old-girl. And on his way, a woman who had an issue of blood for many, many years, and in fact all the various cured that she tried just made the condition worse, saw the Lord and thought to herself, “If only I could touch the hem of his garment, then I would be cured.” Well, she did so; she did grab the hem of his garment, and the Lord immediately noticed that power had gone out from him and asked who had touched him. In this very difficult situation, for this was not something that a woman would normally do, and particularly to be found out about it, yet the woman did answer the Lord and made herself known, whereupon he commented on her faith, and she was cured from that moment.

What many people don’t know or perhaps they’ve only heard is that this woman’s name was Veronica. Veronica, after that point in time, went on to live a very devoted and pious life, and as the Synaxarion about her says, she reposed in peace. We don’t know how old she was when she reposed, how much longer she lived, or even how old she was at the time, just that she had this terrible condition.

But there is more to the story, for Veronica was so happy with what had happened to her that she commissioned that a statue be made to commemorate the event. In this statue was a figure of our Lord Jesus Christ, standing there, and Veronica herself kneeling at his feet, touching his garment. She had this thing overlaid with bronze, and it was put outside of her door. But even here there was more to the story, for a certain grass would grow at the bottom of the feet of the Lord, and anyone who took this grass and ingested it was cured of all kinds of different diseases.

Now, this isn’t just sort of a strange, hidden story, if you will, about a particular personage from the holy Scriptures, but it was known by many for several hundred years, because in the Life of St. Procopius this statue in bronze is also mentioned, and in fact in the Acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which of course came to the defense of the holy icons and actually condemned the making of statues as they were doing in the West, it says that because of the Lord’s great love for Veronica and the fact that she was acting not out of any kind of malice or trying to do something that was incorrect but simply out of love that the Lord accepted this offering that she had made to him and allowed this statue in bronze to continue curing people for about 300 years. Eventually, although it was there under the reign of Diocletian, it’s believed that under the reign of the impious emperor Maxentius that it was finally taken down by him or one of his cohorts, and someone replaced it with a statue of Jupiter.

Obviously, Veronica would not have been very happy with this, but what she was happy about was the fact that our Lord cured her and granted her to live a number of years in peace after having so many years of struggle with this horrible illness that she had, and because of her love for the Lord and her being able to pay for this very expensive bronze statue to be made, the Lord rewarded her yet again with something that would cure people for many, many hundreds of years.

Veronica is not the name that we all associate with this woman. We usually just hear about her as the woman with the issue of blood in the same manner that we hear perhaps about St. Photini the Great Martyr as the woman at the well. But as our holy tradition teaches us, there is more to the story, and that these personages did indeed have very real names. So the next time you hear this story read in church, remember St. Veronica and what she did afterward, and that although her offering was perhaps imperfect in terms of the long history of artistry in the Church and particularly of the icons, yet even in her ignorance of this, the Lord granted her a great gift, and through her a gift to many other people for many, many years.

May we emulate her in her naivety of faith and try and follow the Lord in whatever he asks us to do and know that his healing presence is always near us.