Reflecting on their clasped hands, I realized how touch is not often our usual manner of communicating with one another. In everyday life, we are far more comfortable with words than touch. Indeed, it is safer to express our innermost feelings and thoughts with words. A touch, on the other hand, can be dangerous: it says so much more. Indeed, it does not lie; often, it speaks the truth of our deepest selves.

Looking back on my childhood, I see how true this is in my mother’s embrace and my father’s kisses: these expressed their immeasurable love for my siblings and me. My nephew Glenn reminds me of this truth. These days when I visit him, he says “hello” and “I love you” with a hug that articulates what he cannot yet utter at eighteen months. Indeed, touch is our first language of knowing and showing love.

Touch is what we yearn for from another whom we love, be it family or friend, because it makes their love and concern, their friendship truly felt in our lives. Their touch assures, as it enlivens. Yet, this that we seek is sadly what we are often unable to give to another freely and comfortably in everyday life. How often do we give a family member a hug at the end of the day? Are we honestly comfortable with patting a friend heartily on the back to encourage and affirm? Isn’t it much easier to say “sorry” than to stretch out our hand to our enemy in reconciliation ?

To our struggles of expressing ourselves truthfully through touch, Jesus’ response is to show us otherwise. For Jesus, touch is fundamentally a human, if not spiritual way, of being with and for another. Touch was so much part of Jesus’ way of being friend and companion, teacher and master. And through his touch—those acts of healing, comforting, accompanying others he did—Jesus made real God’s great love for many.

We can make ourselves more human, and the truth of God’s love more real in our lives and those we love and work with, by learning from Jesus. In welcoming, embracing and blessing children, Jesus shows us a meaningful way of being human by ministering to another’s deepest longing to be loved. To touch another is to make God’s love real through deeds rather than words. Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, our fathers and mothers did this well when they reached out and touched another. Like them, we do this every now and then too. In these moments, God’s love is far more manifest than any homily, pronoucement or song can convey.

Perhaps, what humankind truly desires most then in a touch is not satisfaction of a physical want or gratification of an emotional longing. No, what each person seeks deep within himself is an experience of God’s love through another’s touch. And we yearn for this for no other reason than that we were made to be in touch with God.

This week, we might want to reflect on this question, “Can I begin to be more the person I am called to be by reaching out and touching someone who thirsts for God's love?”

photo: three girls holding hands by ray moller