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Chapter X
The outstretched hand
And immediately Jesus stretching forth His hand took hold of him. Matthew 14, 31.

Lord Jesus, physical attitudes are not unimportant for our contemplation. Each one of Your corporeal acts described by the Gospels has a meaning according to the Spirit. Can Your customary actions inspire mine?

In point of fact, if I exclude Your Passion, which remains unique, the actions which you performed are no different from those of most men. Your actions have been those which we perform daily, hourly.

Your attitudes and ours have been the same, insofar as they involved identical, exterior movements. And that, even when You were performing a miracle. A difference does not exist however. It consists in the disposition of soul whence the actions proceed.

Did I say “Your actions can inspire mine?” It is not a question of continually wondering: “What action would Jesus perform?”

The question is not to imagine extraordinary actions which I would attribute to You in my own circumstances, but rather to ask myself in what spirit You accomplished the actions which I am in the process of performing or which I am going to have to perform.

There is not one of my attitudes which I cannot render new and inspired – but, of course, God alone truly inspires – if I try to make them conform with Yours or, rather, allow You to give them a share in Your own.

Your silence, for example.

* Just as silence arising from sloth, cowardice, anger, wrath, spite, is sterile and bad, so also silence is sacred which constitutes the entrance into Your own silence, - Your silence with the Father, Your silence before Pilate (“But Jesus gave him no answer”), Your silence of recollection and maturation which prepares the word and makes it fruitful.

Another very simple example:
* Your people were accustomed to pray standing. Only once does the Gospel show You kneeling in prayer. It was the time of Your agony in the garden. So often my kneeling seems routine and meaningless! (And how different from those impassioned prostrations which Peter, Mary Magdalen and several sick people made before You!) O Lord, inspire my genuflections. Make of each of them not only a prostration before you but a union with Your own genuflection before the Father at Gethsemani.

There is one of my attitudes, and one of the most frequent, which I should like particularly to incorporate with the attitude which corresponded to it in Your earthly life. It is what I shall call the attitude of the outstretched hand.

The statement from the Gospel which I wrote down at the beginning of this meditation shows You stretching forth Your hand and taking hold of Peter, at the very moment when he was sinking in the sea.

Very often Your hand makes a saving gesture, the meaning of which was expressed by Your words. You “took by the hand” the daughter of the synagogue leader who had just died, and she arose.

You “took by the hand” a blind man, and You put Your hand on his eyes, and he was cured.

You “put Your fingers” into the ears of a sick man and You “touched his tongue” and he too was cured.

At the time of Your Ascension, You blessed Your disciples “lifting up” Your hands.

Your custom was to lay Your hands on the sick and on little children.

And in this way the contact of Your body with the bodies of men brought to these human bodies deliverance and strength.

The gesture of holding out my hand to another person or of taking in my own the hand which is held out, or of shaking the hand which mine meets, is one which happens to me very often. It is one of the most ancient gestures which human tradition has handed down to us, and it possesses a precious value as a sign of peace and confidence. This is the “small change” of friendship.

But handshaking is too often degraded. It has become a sort of commonplace rite, a conventional form of politeness in which every real pledge of the person is lacking.

The sign of a vague welcome . . . In certain cases, this gesture even brings to the other person an evil suggestion or invitation. How far we are here, O my Saviour, from Your generous, helpful hand, from that hand which cures and strengthens!

In the Gospels we see You stretch it forth to those who are suffering or who have sinned.

Lord, from now on I consecrate to You this gesture of the outstretched or accepted hand whenever it involves me personally.

Of what was a sign of politeness, make every time a sign of charity, one of Your saving acts. Make of it, each time, a participation in the analogous gestures of Your life among us.

In the Gospel episode about Peter being saved from the water, I see You first of all “stretching forth Your hand” and then taking hold of Peter.

Every time I offer my hand to someone, may it be You Yourself who stretches forth Your hand toward him or her! When my hand clasps another’s let it be You who takes hold of it so as to save it in its secret trials, to make it strong, to bring it to You!

And by the way of reciprocation, each time I accept a hand stretched forth, grant that it may be Your own hand that I clasp with faith and love. By means of the hand which takes hold of mine, take hold of me, make me Yours. May I then hear Your voice which says to me: “Put Me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thy arm.”

Only a very pure, human hand, made supple and pliant to the movements of Your Spirit, could, if I may venture to say so, be of service to You. A hand which has become foolish, inert and dead could not transmit or receive Your grace.

One day, You met in a synagogue a man who had a withered hand. You told him to stand up and stretch forth his hand. “And he stretched it forth. And his hand was restored unto him.”

Lord, my selfish passions have withered my hand. I stand before You, and I present it to You. Make it sound. Make it new and sensitive to Your action, and submissive.

If it is clasped by another hand, whatever the one to whom this hand belongs may be, say to me at that moment: “I place My hand upon you so that you may be Mine.” If I clasp another hand, say to me: “I place My hand upon this other, for behold from your hand I have made Mine.”