Readings: Job 7.1-4, 6-7 / Responsorial Psalm 147. 1-6 (R/v cf 3a) / I Corinthians 9.16-19, 22-23 / Mark 1.29-39
“He approached her, grasped her hand, and helped her up.”
This is how the gospel writer Mark describes Jesus healing Simon Peter’s mother-in-law from her fever. He focuses our attention on Jesus’ touch. We can however miss this detail altogether in today's gospel story because we are often busy interpreting it in terms of miracles and mission.
Touch. It isn’t our usual manner of communicating with one another.
We are far more comfortable interacting with words in everyday life. Words are safe; they allow us to control how we want to express our inner feelings and thoughts. A touch, on the other hand, can be dangerous: it can say so much more, and it never lies.
Isn’t this true of the immeasurable love our parents have for us when they embrace us? Don’t we witness the joy of being intimate when we chance upon a couple kissing? And aren’t we humbled by the tenderness of elderly friends who clasped their hands in care to cross a busy street?
I believe we are all aware of how much a touch can say in its silence about the depth of love. This is because we have all come to know another's love in their touch.
Yes, don’t we yearned to be touched by another whom we love, be it family or friend? And, don’t we always hope they will touch us because then their love and concern, their friendship and care become real in our lives? Indeed, I know you will agree with me that their touch assures us, as it also enlivens our days.
Yet, this touch that we seek is sadly what you and I often find ourselves unable to give to another freely and comfortably in everyday life. How often do we give a loved one a hug or a kiss 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 so much easier to say “sorry” than to stretch out our hand to our enemy in reconciliation? I suspect our answers to these questions will betray this truth: we all suffer from a poverty of touch in our lives.
By showing us how Jesus healed Simon Peter’s sick mother-in-law by approaching, grasping and helping her, Mark teaches us the Christ-like way to overcome this poverty. It involves approaching one and all personally. Jesus healed this woman and the many others in today’s gospel story in the very personal way of touching others to transform their lives.
Wasn’t Jesus’ ministry all about this? Caring for humanity so that all can experience God transforming their hopelessness into fullness of life? Jesus healed by touching and transforming. This kind of healing is the hope the many sick and possessed in the gospel story came to Jesus for. Mark’s story reminds us that his healing is indeed the hope that transforms and enlivens the human condition. "Drudgery" and "enslavement" are two words Job used to describe the human condition in our first reading. Don’t we sometimes echo Job when we grumble about our daily struggles? But when we do so, do you and I seek out Jesus’ healing?
If we don’t but we want to, then, you and I should pay attention to Jesus’ way of touching others. Why? Because Jesus shows us how touch is not just a human of being with and for another; it is fundamentally God’s way of being with us, amongst us and for us.
Touch was so much part of Jesus’ way of being friend and companion, teacher and master, of being savior in our lives. Through his touch — those acts of healing, comforting, and accompanying others that he did — Jesus made God’s great love for many real. Yes, this is how God healed, and continues to heal.
I’d like to propose that when we make ourselves more human by touching another, we better embody God’s love in the lives of those we live, work and recreate with. This is how God’s life can come alive in each one of us. Yes, touching another like Jesus is how we become a little more divine by being a lot more human.
Today’s good news is that in Jesus you and I have a meaningful example of how to be human: by ministering to another’s deepest longing to be loved by touching them. The good news of God’s love comes alive more through deeds than in words.
Think of the saints, of the religious sisters and brothers who taught us, of Pope Francis who embraced the man with boils on his face and body, and of our parents and friends who hold us and kiss us; haven’t they all reached out and touched at one time with the love of God, both in our brightest moments and in our darkest days?
And emulating them, haven’t we done likewise too, now and then? I believe these are moments when we humbled ourselves to allow God to make God’s love so much more concrete and real than any homily or Church pronouncement can announce, or any love song or expensive Tiffany ring can convey.
Perhaps, what humankind truly desires most in today’s trying times of senseless religious persecution, unending strife, continuing discrimination, and unjust poverty is the simple touch of another who genuinely cares. Not that kind of touch that gratifies a physical want or an emotional longing. But that consoling, comforting, caring touch that satisfies that deep yearning in each of us for the love of God.
And we yearn for this perhaps for no other reason than that we are made to be in touch with God — in touch with our God, who always and everywhere, desires to do nothing less for us than to approach us, to grasp our hands and to help us up.
Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
photo: ‘the touch’ by Russell klika (from the internet)
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