Everyone Sought to Touch Jesus

... though to us with our clear-cut definitions, our discipline, and our sacraments, it may seem so vague that it is hard for us to realize how much it means to them.  This is their personal approach to God.  Very often it seems to be hardly that at all, so vague is it, so closely does it lean to sentimentality.  It may be simply a memory of childhood, or a stirring of the spirit when a certain familiar hymn is heard; it may be just a fling of the heart to God, on seeing the first wild spray of blossom that proclaims the spring.  But it is quite surely an indication of that individual’s approach to God and of his approach to them, and it is as sweet to them as it would be to a blind man if, reaching out in darkness, he touched the garment hem of Christ.

Too often, through our own fault, we give people who are thus clinging to their own personal contact with God the idea that Catholicism would sweep it away.  Quite wrongly, we give them the idea that we are not seeking any more, that we have a formula for everything, that we hold feeling in contempt, live only by acts of will, and that there is nothing that we cannot explain.

Of course this is untrue.  We too are always seeking for God, always reaching out blind fingers to touch his garment, and we are blinded by the very light of the mysteries of our faith, which we can live by but cannot explain and can barely begin to understand.

To the enquirer, our hard, unanswerable arguments, dealt out blow by blow with our sledgehammer of zeal, are all too convincing — to the mind.  But the heart rises up in revolt against “apologetics” which may convince against the will, and sweep away that lovely touch in the darkness which is at the heart of their lives.