Commentary on the Gospel of
Touch Me
When the serpent inquired of any prohibitions from God, Eve readily cited God’s prohibitive orders and with some ingenious addition of her own: “God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die’” (Gen 3:3). God had made no mention of touching (cf. Gen 2.15); it was Eve’s own invention, which could only mean her own sinful desire to break the law and grab what was God’s, and her own mind’s powerful self-censuring by unconscious addition to the original prohibition. Such heightened prohibition had since then remained in the collective consciousness of Israel: to touch God’s Ark was to die. The truth is, grace should not be grabbed; it must be received gratefully when given graciously. Now that the Time has come, Jesus invites us, the frightened humanity, to do what we have long desired: to touch Divinity, feel the scars of his wounds of love for us, and to merge our self in his embrace, like a child in its mother’s.
