The power of touch

I was asked to put the message from our newsletter on here too, so here it is.

Dear parishioners and friends of our 3 Churches

I hope you celebrated the great feast of Easter – as best we can anyway in these circumstances. Today we move on to so-called “Low Sunday”, when we see Jesus appear to the Apostles. They needed so much reassurance after Our Lord’s Death and Resurrection. Above all, Thomas needed to have his doubts dispelled. And, of course, Jesus did that by asking Thomas to do the one thing we can’t do at the moment - to touch Him. “Give me your hand” Jesus invites Thomas. We may not be able to grasp one another’s hands in the normal human way at the moment. But just take a moment and in your imagination picture the hand of the Lord being offered to you. Reassurance, presence, hope, peace, love.

Yes, I was chatting with my sister about this lack of touch. She cannot hug her grandchildren. I told her how I cannot hug a bereaved parent or spouse at the graveside. Touch is so important isn't it? We see Jesus using touch a lot in the Gospels, both him touching others, often in healing, and sometimes others touching him.  So his reaching out to the lepers would have been so shocking for the onlookers, who not only suspected that the disease was catching, but also believed that it made the sufferer, and therefore Jesus too, unclean and therefore an outcast too. Watch him almost using sign language to touch the deaf and dumb man, and lay his hands sensitively on the shoulders of the woman who is doubled up (above). Perhaps even more amazing is how he knows when the woman with a haemorrhage has touched him (left).  It says he is aware that power has gone out from him.  That's one astonishing sense of touch. So let's never be afraid of reaching out to him in prayer and touching his arm or even the hem of his cloak.  He is listening, he is feeling, he knows.