Isn’t it interesting how many things have gone contactless in recent years. From ordering our groceries for pick-up to late night fast-food runs that are now dropped off on our porch, we don’t actually have to have contact with people. We can print our own stamps at home and transfer money from any number of apps. We apply for jobs online and accept offers virtually. We use Telehealth for nearly everything except setting bones. We don’t even meet potential sexual partners face-to-face. That happens by swiping left or right. If we so choose we can never have contact with another human being, never be exposed to their germs, never smell their scent, or hear whether or not their laugh is annoying or charming. We can live in relative isolation. In fact, isolation is becoming the default for an entire generation that now works, studies, shops, is entertained, dates, and worships from home.
Contactless is normal. It’s now a far more conscious and intentional a choice to meet face-to-face and to handle life’s business in person. Yet, we are hella depressed. One wonders if contactlessness will be the death of joy.
The Healing of the Hemorrhaging Woman
Sunday was probably my favorite Liturgy of Lent. It is the Week of the Hemorrhaging Woman. This is not my first post about her. You can read another here. There’s so much to which I relate: her pain, her isolation, her abuse at the hands of doctors, her desperation. There’s so much to admire: her faith, her audacity, her action.
If you don’t know her story, I’ll sum up: She bled for 12 years without relief. She had one long menstruation. She saw doctors, but was only worse for the treatment they prescribed. Think of what that meant for a woman in ancient Israel. She was unclean according to the Law. Therefore there would be no intimacy, no fertility, no chance to offer sacrifices and to worship with your community, no substantial connection to family or neighbors. It would complete isolation. The hopelessness must have been oppressive in the extreme.
Then this rabbi Jesus came to town. The buzz was that he is a healer. In a tremendous act of intrepidity, she left her home. Knowing full-well she was unclean and unfit to be out and about, she went among the crowd, likely veiled and hidden. She didn’t even confront Jesus. She didn’t make a single request. She just wanted to touch the fringe.
The Torah commands devout Jewish men to attach Tzitzit (knotted fringes) to the four corners of their clothing. To this day this symbolizes adherence to the Law. Jesus would have been wearing Tzitzit while being the fulfillment of the Law. He is a walking embodiment of the Law in all it means, it all its intentions, in all its nuance. He is sublimity, perfection, pure virtue.
This woman who had lived isolated from everything and everyone for 12 years because of the law, broke the law and went among the crowd, and reached out her hand. She made contact with the fringe, with the Fulfillment of the Law.
Jesus stopped. He asked his disciples, “Who touched me?” Understandably they were incredulous. The crowd was pressing all around them. How should they know who touched him? But our Lord did not mean who bumped into him. He was not inquiring about accidents. He was asking about intention. He wanted to know who laid hold of his perfection with faith, because power went out of him. Her audacious faith linked her with the only solution to her situation.
She was made whole by this Divine contact. She was fully restored, not because of her own perfection, but because Jesus fulfills all the requirements of the Law and his will is to heal.
Making Contact
There are livestreams of every kind of religious service these days. You can sip your coffee while sitting on your sofa in your bathrobe. You can Venmo your donation when the collection come around. You can use chat features to talk to other people also live-streaming their “worship.” And you can sit in total isolation and despair.
Catholicism is something wholly different. It is a Faith of contact. It requires that we exercise mustard seed size faith in order to lay hold of holiness. We must come into contact. Contactmore, not contactless.
Through the waters of baptism that must touch our skin, through the chrism oil that a priest swipes across our foreheads, through the anointing of our bodies for the salvation of our souls in the Last Rites as we lay dying, our faith requires contact. We must go to Confession in person to tell our sins. They cannot be texted over. Everything we do as faithful Catholics confronts us with our isolation and compels us to touch Jesus–he who is the Fulfillment of the Law, he who is Perfection and Completion of every desire, of every requirement. We cannot be perfect on our own no matter how much the world tells us that we are perfect just the way we are. We all know it isn’t true. At least it certainly is not for me.
I look in the mirror and I know. I lay awake at night and I need no convincing. I fall very far short of perfection. I am short-tempered when I should be patient. I an unkind when I need to be charitable. I am as full of greed, lust, doubt, and envy as anyone ever has been. I am that woman hemorrhaging. Full of shame. Unfit to stand before Holiness. But there is that fringe waiting to be touched, willing to be touched, available, if for one brief moment I can be audacious.
The ultimate connection, of course, is the Eucharist. The source and summit of our faith. Jesus is not only present to us–Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity–he not only allows us to touch him, he not only touches us, he also enters into our very being. The ultimate contact is Jesus fully present in this bag of bones.
O Lord, in your great mercy, when this Body and Blood is mingled with our bodies and souls, grant that it may be for the pardon of faults, the forgiveness of sins, and for everlasting joy and eternal life with all your saints. Amen
Anaphora of St. John Chrysostom
Mingling is a wonderfully gentle, transformative, heroic, and tragic thing. And it requires participation. Jesus is doing his part. Will I leave the shame of my dwelling, venture into public to confront my addiction to the opinions of others, and reach out my hand to touch his fringe?
“Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.” (Luke 8)
reconciling things 
This is beautiful. Relatable. And SO important. Thank you, friend. 💕
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