Touch Me and See
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April 14, 2018“Why are you troubled?
And why do questions arise in your hearts?
Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.
Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones
as you can see I have.” (Lk 24:38-39)
A word for today from St Augustine:
“Christ rose from the tomb with his wounds healed, though their scars remained. He knew it would be good for his disciples if he retained the scars, for those scars would heal the wound in their hearts. What wound do I mean? The wound of disbelief; for even when he appeared before their eyes and showed them his true body, they still took him for a disembodied spirit…. What, then can it have been that they were still incapable of seeing? It was his body, the Church. Him they could see well enough, but the Church not at all…. Now we too find ourselves in a situation not unlike theirs: we can see something which was not visible to them, while they could see something not visible to us. We can see the Church extending throughout the world today, something that was withheld from them, but Christ, who in his human body was perceptible to them, cannot be seen by us…. But to them and to us alike the whole Christ is revealed, though neither to them nor to us has it yet been granted to see him in his entirety…. Nevertheless, Christ is absent from no one; he is wholly present in all of us, even though he still waits for his body to be completed.”
(Sermon 116, 1.5-6)
Touch me and see – touch me by your faith, said St Bernard. Touch me and believe that all things are in the process of being transfigured into my resurrected body. And so touch all things – the wounded body of material creation, the wounded body of the Church, and the wounded bodies of all people – with reverence. See in them with faith what your eyes cannot behold now: their glorious identity in my risen body.