Commuters on a Canadian Metro train witnessed a heart-moving conclusion to a tense moment. They watched as a 70-year-old woman gently reached out and offered her hand to a young man whose loud voice and disturbing words were scaring other passengers. The lady’s kindness calmed the man who sank to the floor of the train with tears in his eyes.
He said, “Thanks, Grandma,” stood up, and walked away.
The woman later admitted to being afraid. But she said, “I’m a mother and he needed someone to touch.”
While better judgement might have given her reason to keep her distance, she took a risk of love.
As we hear in the story, the woman was afraid, but I am sure so were all the onlookers.
These days we don’t get involved either because of danger to ourselves or the legalities that it may cause.
There have been too many examples of good Samaritans going to the aid of someone and been brutally assaulted, even killed.
Our society today does make it difficult to reach out to others in their moment of need.
There is many an incident today which involves drugs particularly ‘ice’ where it is difficult to reason with someone.
This means we are not on a normal ‘playing field’.
The chap in our story was upset emotionally and it would seem the woman’s loving touch was all he needed. If he had been on drugs it may have had a very different outcome.
We have other areas now where it is not permissible to touch another as it can be seen as harassment or abuse.
So whatever the circumstances it is sad and unfortunate that this is the world we live in today.
It is obvious, that this is not the world that Jesus wanted for us.
Although he was confronted with rejection for the times that he touched someone, whether because they had leprosy, or he touched parts of the body like the eyes, or mouth or ears which is an exposed area of the body and regarded by Jewish law as profane.
Jesus would deliberately challenge these laws.
Maybe to show that, for him, it was important to help and to heal than be restricted by these laws.
We would say that he seemed to get away with it but not today.
We have created a society and a world that now requires laws to protect it from itself.
Jesus touched people, he laid hands on them, he saw how important this was in the healing process.
But today this is not to be, the school playground it is not to be.
A child can fall over and all the child needs is a touch on the head, a sign of compassion and love . . . but not to be.
The woman in our story could be the story of Jesus – she put out her hand and touched him. People are reluctant to put themselves in these situations any more, I know priests are.
How lovely it is to see a mother or father comforting a distressed child, but not to be for others.
In Luke 5:13 ‘Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man’. He would not have known the situation that we had created for ourselves today, sadly.
Fr Michael Morley
Parish Priest
Sacred Heart Parish
Tatura
Our Daily Bread, 26th April 2017
