Noli me tangere

I agree with Matt's comment that we need a certain formality in our relationship with our God. Only in that way do we recognize "our place." This is also true of our relationships with others. I have heard it said that love can get too empathetic and smarmy, on one hand, or become too distant and detached, on the other. One needs an appropriate distance. Noli me tangere! (which means don't touch me, or better, don't cling to me) is good advice about how to re-spect others (in their presence and their absence), as Titian's masterpiece depicts.

Pascal pointed at the same idea in his Pensee's:

"So with pictures seen from too far or too near; there is but one exact point which is the true place wherefrom to look at them: the rest are too near, too far, too high or too low. Perspective determines that point in the art of painting. But who shall determine it in truth and morality?"

In Battling To The End, Rene Girard's latest book about our age's apocalyptic tendencies (the "trend to extremes" in violence and human interactions), Girard and his conversation partner Benoit Chantre cite this Pensee and conclude that the point Pascal is referring to (the "one true place") is "nothing other than charity." (p.134). According to Girard, only our imitation of Christ will help us escape the "order of bodies"-- a description of the entanglements of hyper-closeness or resentment and anger that we are prone to as mimetic creatures -- into the "order of charity," where I can relate respectfully and helpfully with others without being too close or too distant. "To imitate Christ by keeping the other at the right distance is to escape the mimetic whirlpool: no longer imitate in order to no longer be imitated." To put on Christ not only helps us to escape the mimetic whirlpool, it helps others do the same by withdrawing ourselves from the imitation gallery. As an unrecognized one, I disappear into Christ so as to let Christ appear in me. Then, any model I offer is a positive one, not me but Christ in me. This strikes me as a good description of the Christian vocation: to allow God's call to resound, to echo in my life, I am giving God's call a true hearing -- and becoming a saint!