He comes to touch us
Perhaps the most well known and certainly most dramatic image from Michelangelo is this painting in the Sistine Chapel, inspired by the creation of man in the Book of Genesis. God's mighty finger thrusts down towards Adam. The touch of God awakens the newly created Adam and begin the life of humankind. Michelangelo Buonarroti was commissioned by Pope Julius II to repaint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and he completed this around the year 1510. His image of the divine touch is a striking way of expressing the Genesis teaching that everything and every person originates in God. Saint John, in the Gospel of Christmas Day is even more specific in saying that all things are created in and through and with Christ. He emphasises: “not one thing had its being except through Him”.
Christmas celebrates a decision of God. Through the Old Testament story we knew that God loved the people of his creation. They were his people and He was their God, but they found faithfulness to him to be too demanding, for we humans often find faithfulness a real problem! God was so close, as we hear through the prophets, yet he was separate. There came a time when God could no longer tolerate this separation and he made the decision that His Word would become flesh and live among us, and not just among us, but like us in every way, except sin.
Jesus had a lot to learn about his new relatives. He felt their pain deeply, he was stung by their hostility, hurt by their misunderstanding, amazed by their lack of faith and trust. Jesus we angered by the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, driven to tears over his own people. He even had to ask his closest friend if he really loved him. Although he came at the Father's bidding, he wondered at the end if the Father had forsaken him, for the world treated him as a stranger, even some of his very own people rejected him.
To touch a person you have to come close to them. Christmas is our memory and celebration that Jesus comes close to touch us. During his years in Palestine he touched many people; he touched their bodies, their eyes, their ears and healed them. Most of all he touched minds and hearts, and those who were touched by Jesus found that they were changed, and they could not go back to living as others did, just for what this world offers, wonderful though that is.
As in the days when he walked the hills of Galilee and the streets of Jerusalem, people want to touch Jesus, and most of all when they are sick or sorrowful. The Gospel recalls that one woman wanted to just touch the hem of his garment. In our needs and worries, our bereavements and loss, when words fail us, we need again to touch and be touched. What good is it if only those how lived a small country 2000 years ago could be touched by Jesus? So He is here in our midst in his Body, the Church, available for all. In his wise providence he give us sacraments — signs — which are literately occasions of touching Christ and being touched by Him.
Today, as then, He accepts the risk of hostility, misunderstanding, lack of faith and trust, even rejection. There is the same possibility that people now will say that they do not accept and welcome his Body, the Church, just as happened when they met him in his physical body. But He continues to reach out to touch us, with healing, forgiveness, peace and reassurance, confirming the first touch of the Father to Adam. In Michelangelo’s painting, Adam is stretching out his hand to make that contact with God. Christmas is our celebration of God coming close to touch us and our opportunity to reach out and make contact with God.
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