Divine Hands

.

I love hands. That statement isn't as random as you may think. I have been thinking about hands for the last week or so. Fun fact: the human hand has the most bones of any part of the human body. Each of those bones allows the hand to do all the myriad of things it does. And it does do a myriad of things.

My husband has beautiful hands. I always found it quite miraculous in a charming way that his hands seemed custom made to fit the head of each of our newborns. Each of those tiny, downy haired heads fit perfectly in the curve of his cupped hand. By design? I think yes. Every dad's hands are by design made for holding their particular babies' heads.

God loves hands. He used them for so many things. I am not particularly a "devotional" type person, but if the Church gave us a devotion to the Holy Hands of Jesus, I would be a devotee. The things I love most about Him have always involved His sacred and beautiful hands.

He held Mary and Joseph's finger perhaps when He was born, and they felt His need for them in that tiny grasping hand...and perhaps marveled and puzzled at the same time. He sawed, hammered, drew up carpenter's plans with His hands. He washed his hands. He unrolled the ancient scrolls in the Synagogue with quiet, confident hands. He probably wrapped his big hands around his mother's small hands when he left Nazareth - with a love in that tender gesture we will never be able to fathom - a son for his mother.

He laid His hands on feverish heads, on the bodies of surprised lepers, on crippled people. He spread mud on the man born blind's eyes and they were opened. He lifted up Mary Magdalene from shame to dazed redemption with his strong, supporting hands - in Simon's very house where all were scandalized that he had touched her. He drew in the sand. He cooked and ate with His hands...I can't help thinking his hands might have had a familiar smell to the apostles when he served them - like my own mom's hands which always smelled faintly of garlic and yeast - a smell of home to me. He hauled in nets with his hands, he raised Lazarus with those hands, He cast out devils with a flourish of those hands. He calmed the raging sea and pulled out a terrified, dripping Peter from the waves with His hands. He gave a little girl back to her father raised to life with those hands.

All that LOVE and TENDERNESS seeping through those hands.

Even after He resurrected from the dead, he held out his nail marked hand for Thomas to touch, and I really believe that once Thomas touched, Jesus enfolded his hands in His large ones and held on tight for a minute with such love and understanding. I believe that was what made Thomas sink to his knees and cry out "My Lord and My God". Touched by Jesus.

If I ever make it to the end of the race and cross that finish line, I hope with all my heart that I will know what it is like to have my hands disappear into His and know the warmth of totally belonging to Him at last, to never be let go. I will know by His hands over mine that I am home.

Blessed be the Sacred and Beautiful hands of Jesus.

Taken from my essay The Holy Hands of Jesus, first published at Theology of Home, June 2023