SABBATH: THE TOUCH OF GOD

Monday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time

Lk 13:10-17

We do not only have the power to touch. Our touch in itself is powerful. For example, scientific studies confirm that touch plays a significant role in the healthy development of children. Children who enjoy a high degree of physical contact with their parents are healthier than those who are denied such contact. Infants who are always touched walk sooner, talk sooner, and develop higher IQs.

I remember my adopted son, Pipo, when he was a baby. He was only 1.8 kilos when he came to our family. Certainly, he was undernourished. But because he was the apple of everybody’s eyes, he was often caressed and carried. He is now a very healthy 5-year old boy. When he was an infant, I would often take his tiny hands and make them touch my face, from the forehead to my chin; and when his hands would touch my lips, I would hold them right there as I say, “Abba…Abba…Abba.” Lo and behold, the first word he uttered before he turned 1 year old was “Abba”, the Hebrew word for “Daddy” with which he now addresses me.

If human touch is powerful, think of the power that the touch of Jesus must have had and continues to have. Today, His touch makes a woman, tormented by a spirit for eighteen years, finally free.

But the official of the synagogue in which Jesus’ touch healed this woman raised a criticism because the healing touch was given on the Sabbath. As far as he is concerned, healing on the Sabbath breaks the God’s law. For him, freedom from any torment can wait but observance of the Sabbath law cannot. This synagogue official does not deserve to be a synagogue official at all because he fails to see that the synagogue should always be a place where God touches people not only on the Sabbath, but most especially on the Sabbath.

The Sabbath is God’s blessing for His people. It is one of His many special ways to touch those who call on Him. The Sabbath is God’s touch on His people. The Sabbath is God touching man. When Jesus gives God’s loving and healing touch to anyone, He does not break the Sabbath; He fulfills it.

The Lord continues to touch many others through us. We cannot have any excuse to refuse touching anyone who needs the touch of God from us. No matter what day it is, Sabbath or otherwise, we are called to touch others with the power of Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath.