The Power of Touch

A little boy scrapes his knee on the playground and runs to his mother for comfort.  She holds him close while he cries and gently cleans the scratch.  An old woman sits by her husband’s hospital bed as he lays ill.  She places a cool cloth on his forehead and murmurs her love for him.  A priest stops at a crosswalk and bends to talk to a man sitting on the sidewalk holding a sign and a cup.  He touches the man on the shoulder and the man looks up for the first time.

We all know the healing power of touch.  Without words, the touch of someone we love can comfort and affirm us, can shield and protect, can forgive and heal.  On nearly every page of the Gospels we read of Jesus’ healing touch.  The sick were drawn to Christ for His touch.  They are all hoping for physical healing, seeming to know intuitively that Christ can heal them if He chooses to.  And He does choose to heal them, one after the other.  But He gives them all a “bonus” in the process, something they didn’t expect and weren’t thinking about:  spiritual healing.  In fact, He often withholds their hopes for physical health until He’s addressed the state of their souls and the depths of their faith.  Their spiritual sicknesses are Christ’s primary concern.  And yet He always wants them to be physically whole.  He loves us—body AND soul.  When a leper came to Him for healing, Jesus didn’t rely on parables or preaching or prophecy, but on the simple human gesture of touch.  In the culture of His day, which placed so much value on words alone to convey meaning, thought and emotion, Jesus goes against Jewish norms and touches an “unclean” person.  By reaching out to the leper, Jesus made him entirely whole again.  He healed his body by removing the skin disease.  He healed his dignity by touching his body in the face of social ostracism.  Once excluded, the leper left Jesus accepted, an outcast no longer.

Our mission as His Church is to do what Jesus did.  In anointing the sick, we continue the healing Sacrament established by Christ (Mark 6:7-13;James 5:14-15).  Through the power of touch, infused by the graces of the Holy Spirit, Christ’s healing gifts continue today.  We are also called to minister to the “untouchables” in our own communities:  the homeless, the displaced, the immigrant, the imprisoned, and the forgotten among us.  To fail to love the less lovable and touch the less touchable is to fail in our imitation of Christ.  As He healed the lame, the blind, the deaf and the sick of all kinds, His sacred hands freed them from their spiritual illnesses as well.  Those same hands broke the bread that fed the five thousand, and broke His own Body as the Bread of Heaven at the Last Supper.  And on the next day, His healing hands were pierced through for you and me by Roman nails.  As His A little boy scrapes his knee on the playground and runs to his mother for comfort.  She holds him close while he cries and gently cleans the scratch.  An old woman sits by her husband’s hospital bed as he lays ill.  She places a cool cloth on his forehead and murmurs her love for him.  A priest stops at a crosswalk and bends to talk to a man sitting on the sidewalk holding a sign and a cup.  He touches the man on the shoulder and the man looks up for the first time.

We all know the healing power of touch.  Without words, the touch of someone we love can comfort and affirm us, can shield and protect, can forgive and heal.  On nearly every page of the Gospels we read of Jesus’ healing touch.  The sick were drawn to Christ for His touch.  They are all hoping for physical healing, seeming to know intuitively that Christ can heal them if He chooses to.  And He does choose to heal them, one after the other.  But He gives them all a “bonus” in the process, something they didn’t expect and weren’t thinking about:  spiritual healing.  In fact, He often withholds their hopes for physical health until He’s addressed the state of their souls and the depths of their faith.  Their spiritual sicknesses are Christ’s primary concern.  And yet He always wants them to be physically whole.  He loves us—body AND soul.  When a leper came to Him for healing, Jesus didn’t rely on parables or preaching or prophecy, but on the simple human gesture of touch.  In the culture of His day, which placed so much value on words alone to convey meaning, thought and emotion, Jesus goes against Jewish norms and touches an “unclean” person.  By reaching out to the leper, Jesus made him entirely whole again.  He healed his body by removing the skin disease.  He healed his dignity by touching his body in the face of social ostracism.  Once excluded, the leper left Jesus accepted, an outcast no longer.

Our mission as His Church is to do what Jesus did.  In anointing the sick, we continue the healing Sacrament established by Christ (Mark 6:7-13;James 5:14-15).  Through the power of touch, infused by the graces of the Holy Spirit, Christ’s healing gifts continue today.  We are also called to minister to the “untouchables” in our own communities:  the homeless, the displaced, the immigrant, the imprisoned, and the forgotten among us.  To fail to love the less lovable and touch the less touchable is to fail in our imitation of Christ.  As He healed the lame, the blind, the deaf and the sick of all kinds, His sacred hands freed them from their spiritual illnesses as well.  Those same hands broke the bread that fed the five thousand, and broke His own Body as the Bread of Heaven at the Last Supper.  And on the next day, His healing hands were pierced through for you and me by Roman nails.  As His Church, we are His hands now, called to heal one another in His love.

“One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.”

—St. Teresa of CalcuttaChurch, we are His hands now, called to heal one another in His love.

“One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.” 

—St. Teresa of Calcutta