Understand: Touching the wounds of Christ

	Word to Life  Jean Denton

When I first returned to my hometown of New Orleans several months after it had been hit by Hurricane Katrina, I wanted to see the destruction. On the other hand, I didn't want to be a devastation tourist, gawking at the loss and suffering.

My best friend Christine, like my mother, no longer lived in the part of the city that was hardest hit; the neighborhood where we'd grown up was totaled. "You've got to go over there and see what it's like," Christine told me when I arrived in town.

"How do people feel about that?" I asked her. "Are they offended by people driving by just to look?"

Second Sunday of Easter (Sunday, April 15, 2007) Acts 5:12-16 Psalm 118:2-4, 13-15, 22-24 Rev. 1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19 John 20:19-31

"No," she said flatly. "They want people to come - they want them to see what happened and what they're living with. They need people to know, so they can get help."

Through the eyes of a Christian, this is touching the wounds.

Is it voyeuristic fascination with another's suffering? No.

In this weekend's Gospel, Jesus invites us to touch the wounds of the victim as he invites Thomas to place his fingers in Jesus' own wounded hands and side. Why?

Because feeling the wounds is the first, necessary step to compassion, and compassion leads to belief in resurrection.

No one gets through this life without wounds of his or her own. But it's the nature and mercy of resurrection that allows us to put the suffering behind us. Still, hurt and horror continue in the world. So until the Last Day, resurrection must take place again and again.

I can relate to Thomas' humbling moment - having to touch to believe. It has never been heroic.

	Reflection questions • When recently have you "touched the wounds" of another? What was the result? • How were you touched in return by the connection?

But, incredulously, it has seemed a privilege, walking through the final stages of cancer with my father and of AIDS with my friend; holding a dying baby in a Haitian orphanage; weeping with a teenager as she recounted an experience of abuse.

We touch the wounded and we touch Jesus himself. As his disciples, we are invited: called to continually feel the wounds of others and thereupon believe the resurrection.

This column is offered in cooperation with the North Texas Catholic of Fort Worth, Texas.