Johanna of Alexandroscene
From around Alexandroscene, daughter of Jacques. She is 7 to 8 years old and is healed by Jesus of a bone disease:[1]
"A bone had been rotting in her back for two years, paralysing her and leading her slowly to death with great pain. We had her visited by doctors at Antioch, Tyre, Sidon and even at Caesarea and Paneas, and we spent so much on doctors and medicines that we were compelled to sell the house we had in town and retire to the one in the country [...]"[2]
Her mother, pushed by the faith of her husband, goes in search of Jesus carrying her daughter, just as he is being driven out of Alexandroscone. Through the intermediary of the shepherd Anna who speaks to her about the girl and tells Jesus where she is,[3] she finds him near the smithy of Titus.
"Jesus, tall, handsome, in the centre of the row, smiles and His face is so radiant that all the light of the sun seems to be concentrated on it while rays of light emanate from it." [...]
Jesus smiles more broadly. And His bright without any expression smile must tell the woman a great deal, as she is no longer anxious, but smiling, as if she were already happy, she bends to pick up her child, and holding her in the folding-seat, with stretched out arms as if she offered her to God, she comes forwards, and when she arrives at Jesus’ feet, she kneels down, lifting as much as she can the child in the seat, who looks ecstatically at Jesus’ most handsome face.
The woman does not say one word. And what else could she say that is not already deeply expressed in her whole attitude?…
And Jesus says but one word, a little, but powerful gladdening word, like God’s «Fiat» at the creation of the world: «Yes.» And He lays his hand on the chest of the little girl.
And the child, with the cry of a woodlark freed from a cage, shouts: «Mummy!» and all of a sudden sits up and slides down on to her feet and embraces her mother, who, exhausted as she is, staggers and is on the point of falling back, in a swoon brought about by tiredness, by anxiety that is calming down, by joy that overwhelms the strength of her heart, already weak by so much suffering. [...]"[4]
Her name
Johanna, feminine of YoHanan, "the eternal has shown grace, has been favorable."