A Touch that cares, heals and gives Life  

September 16, 2025 – Memorial of Saints Cornelius, Pope, and Cyprian, Bishop, Martyrs

Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091625.cfm)

A parent’s touch truly brings relief and comfort to a sick child. A lover’s touch also brings affection and assurance of love. A therapist’s touch certainly brings healing to our aching muscles.

There is, indeed, life in human touch. Yet, this only happens when our touch is gentle and expressed in kindness and love. When touch is filled with malice and bitterness, then, touch also becomes violent. This touch causes pain and could even abuse life, prevent life and take away life.

In today’s Gospel reading, we are reminded of the wonder and power of a gentle touch. This is a touch that cares, heals and gives life. Jesus showed this many times in his healing miracles. Moreover, this time, Jesus manifested his gentle and powerful touch in a different level.

Jesus, as he saw the grief and sorrow of a widowed-mother who lost his only son, was moved with pity. His pity was filled with concern and compassion to a woman who had become hopeless. In a patriarchal society, women had no rights. Her only son was her only hope in life after losing her husband. With both men dead, she was like a “double-dead” person, died twice over again.

Jesus saw this and felt the seemingly hopeless situation of the mother. Further, Jesus also witnessed how things can be unfair. The young man, who must have died of an illness, lost hope towards maturity. He was deprived of the opportunity to discover and hone his potentials as a young man. He also missed the chance to live life to the fullest.

The coffin was somehow the very box that deprived both the mother and her son of hope and life. This greatly moved Jesus. As a response, Jesus did not just remain a passerby. “He stepped forward and touched the coffin.”

“Young man, I tell you, arise!” These words of Jesus renewed hope and life both to the mother and her son who was dead, but was given back the gift of life.

Jesus touched the coffin! He dared to touch that box that tells us of the deprivation of life. Jesus touched the coffin to renew life and renew hope.

We may not be dead yet, but, we too might be already in a coffin, limited in a box of pain and trauma, of loneliness and sadness, of anger and sin. Like the mother, we too might be grieving because of our frustrations and failures, unable to see hope and life. Life can be so unfair for us, leading us to our overwhelming burial of suffocation.

Yet, life is not hopeless at all. There is always hope. Jesus sees and feels our own pain and difficulties. In the same way, the Lord desires to touch our own coffins. He wants to bring life to whatever is preventing and depriving us of living fully.

Let us allow the Lord to gently touch us through the sacraments of the Church. These sacraments truly bring grace of peace, healing, and life. Allow the Lord to touch our hearts through the Holy Scriptures, through His words that will challenge and move us towards hope and life. We allow the Lord to continually touch us through the concern and love of our friends and family members.

For each of us, once again, let us be more conscious that our own touch may always be gentle that definitely expresses care, brings healing and life. Hinaut pa.