“MOVED with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.” —Mark 1:40-42
It’s hard during this pandemic not to be able to embrace, kiss, or touch the people we care about. It’s painful not to be able to visit sick family members and friends in the hospital.
It’s difficult not only for us who are healthy but for those who are ill. They long for our gestures of care, especially our loving touch.
My family and I felt this when my sister was in the hospital for a week. We could not see her. All that we could do was call her or send her a text message. Thank God, at least, we could see her face through a video call. And I’m sure it was harder for her not to be with us, her family.
It’s most painful for people to die in the hospital without their loved ones around them.
For their ardent desires before they leave this earth must be to stay close to their loved ones, to feel their loving touch, and to hear and express words of love and forgiveness.
We earnestly pray for the end of this pandemic so that we could back to the gestures of healing touches and embraces.
This Sunday’s Gospel illustrates the power of healing touch. It was more than Jesus’ divine power that healed the leper. It was also how they felt and received the loving touch and the compassionate and affirming words of Jesus.
The leper knew the dangerous consequences of people touching him. He knew how he could contaminate others, make them also unclean, and suffer the same isolation and rejection.
But Jesus’ took the risk of stretching his hand and touching him, saying, “I do will it!” Jesus’ touch and words enlivened his body, mind, and spirit and made him whole again!
Despite this pandemic, let’s not lose sight of the power of physical touch and any gesture of love and care for those who are sick. When life becomes normal again, we hope to fill our homes, hospitals, churches, temples, and communities with the love and care that comes from the power of the human touch.
Even doctors and nurses know this power. In his book, Alive In God, Timothy Radcliffe shares the wisdom and experience of Abraham Verghese, A Stanford University professor of medicine and novelist. He insists that touch is the heart of all healing. Radcliffe writes:
“The doctor’s touch of the patient is not just diagnostic. It is a ritual that binds them together. He says it is “cathartic for the physician and necessary for the patient. We skip it t our peril.’ It is a covenant that seals the relationship. One must tap the chest, listen to the heartbeat, look under the eyelids and feel the abdomen, attending to the person. He recounts visiting a dying man, in the last hours of his life, who lifted his skeletal fingers and pointed to his chest, as if to say, “Examine me, touch me. Break down the loneliness that threatens to engulf me.”
Indeed, touching with love allows all to discover the living presence of the Risen Christ, the ultimate healer from sin and all ills.
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The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Asian Journal, its management, editorial board and staff.
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Fr. Rodel “Odey” Balagtas is the pastor of Incarnation Church in Glendale, California.