Lent 2007 : The Spiritual Sense of Touch
A sermon preached by Fr Michael Fuller
Touch is basic, it is the sense which seems to indicate being and existence. To live is to touch or to be in contact with the world and with other creatures. Think about the variety of your own contact with the world, with family, friends, animals, plants. On reflection, touch is more than presence or absence, contact and separation. Our most tender and intimate forms of touch are often characterised by a touch that is light and hardly a touch at all, whereas grip (complete contact) is understood as a negative, possessive form.
Touch is very prevalent in Jesus’ ministry, but not only in healings. Consider the kind of contact of involved in the Gospels: eating, drinking, talking as well as healing. The variety of spiritual contact in the gospels is as great as the variance of kinds of touch we experience every day. Do we recognise the spiritual power of our own touch? What messages are we transmitting with our contact with the world? Do we touch because we need? Do we make contact with others only to grasp, control or manipulate?
Read John’s Gospel, chapter 9:
What difference is made by touch in this encounter?
How can it guide us concerning the nature of our own contact with others?
Spiritual touch is a process of discernment, wherein we learn that touch is about desire and faith, putting oneself into the hands of others. It is a lesson in how to be in a relationship, a community and be intimate without dissolving those appropriate distances that separate us. A desire to dissolve distance can also result in a desire to inappropriately possess that which we wish to be close to.
Further Reading
- John 9:1-31, read with Jean Vanier, Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus Through the Gospel of John (2002)
- Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out (1996)
- Gabriel Josipovici, Touch (2002)
Fr Michael Fuller : 27th February 2007