Feeling The Absence of Touch in a Socially Distant Lenten Season

Faith

March 19, 2020

One of my favorite parts of my job is also one of the most mundane. Once a week, I greet students as they arrive at Veritas Academy (each day, a different school administrator takes on this morning greeting duty). Often, I get to talk with parents as well. I shake hands with each one and say, “Good morning!” I almost always get a smile and a “good morning” in return along with a firm handshake—even from sleepy-looking high schoolers.

This enjoyable part of my work changed recently because of an outbreak of the flu. We stopped shaking hands. Now, we have had to suspend our in-person school year because of our community effort to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. I have still enjoyed greeting people with “fake fist bumps”, but something is lost when we don’t touch.

I have been reading through the gospels during this time and reflecting on Christ and His use of touch as a powerful part of His ministry. Jesus often lays hands on people—and often His touch means so much. Of course, He lays hands on the those needing healing, but the real power of His touch is revealed in the ones who He touches.

He touches what is not to be touched, like the leper that touches and heals in Matthew 8. Imagine what that touch meant to that leper who might not have felt the touch of a human for years.

Others touch Him. He is touched by the woman with the flow of blood in Luke 8, who thought that she would be healed if she just touched Jesus. When she did, Jesus recognizes the power of her faith in Him that lies behind that touch.

In the resurrection, Jesus invites Thomas to touch Him, asking Thomas to put his fingers and hand into His wounds in John 20.

These passages led me to a realization. Something is lost when we don’t touch.

As a Christian, I feel very strange not touching people in this time. Now, this isolation is only partial. Most every morning I hug my wife when she comes down to the kitchen where I am getting my day started. I have four daughters. I am still hugging them. I don’t know that I could stop. But I do feel the absence of touch now. I am not touching others. I feel the loss.

Again, something is lost when we don’t touch.

Some Christians use Lent as a time to exercise spiritual disciplines. This year, instead of being frustrated that we are not shaking hands at the passing of the peace, I am trying to feel what it is like to be separated from others. This sounds weird, but I am trying to feel what it is like not to touch. I feel it. It is the feeling that lepers and untouchables and the homeless live in. Now, hopefully for only a season, it is our lot.

This reminds me of Dante who is instructed by and instructs us concerning the lustful and their touching. When Dante meets the most famous lusters in Hell, Francesca di Rimini and Paolo (who are the models of Rodin's famous statue "The Kiss), he sympathizes with them and swoons when he hears their sad tale. On further review, however, Paolo has become an unspeaking object dragged around by Francesca. It awakens the realization that lust is not love; it is making someone a possession.

In Purgatory, however, touching becomes healing for the lustful. These people have repented and are headed for Heaven, but Dante shows them learning the lesson that we should be learning on earth now: how to hate the sin that they struggled with and love righteousness. What is the task for those believers - who were once at war with their disordered libido but now bound for Heaven - that helps them learn to avoid lust? They learn to embrace, to touch each other, and to do this with purity.

You see, Satan, true to form, has taken something so innately desired and needed for us as relational souls - meaningful touch - and found ways to twist it into something that can demean and disorder. But there is hope.

Heaven is fitted for sinners because Jesus is fitted for sinners. This has always been a hopeful section of The Comedy. God provides perfection for us, but not in our efforts. Instead He sent a perfect sacrifice for us.

He does call us to wake up every day and fight against the sin that can so easily ensnare us. It is a fight that will last at least until our last breath on this planet. For many, physical touch is part of that fight thanks to what our enemy has tried to make of it. But when we get back to touch at its purest form, we find it plays a big part in restoring, encouraging, and healing broken souls and lives.

Something is lost when we do not touch.

So, here’s to an odd Lenten discipline and the hope that we can return to handshakes and embraces soon. I would invite you, however, to feel the absence of touch in this season. Avoid it to protect others. Avoid it to protect the most vulnerable in our society. Avoid it, but feel what you are missing so that when we can once again greet each other with handshakes and embraces, we will appreciate them even more.

Are you looking for a school that encourages your student to think deeply about what is good, true, and beautiful, even in the midst of a chaotic and darkening world? We invite you to explore the unique and wonderful community of Veritas Academy.

As much as we relish learning and being together, Veritas Academy is adapting to the current challenges and going virtual, so while we won't be able to physically touch, we can virtually touch each other's hearts and minds through online instruction and meeting. Click below to view our tour schedule (subject to change currently based on current school closures) and to arrange a time to meet with our Admissions Director Jill Trimbath.