Christ came down to earth and rose from the dead; by his incarnation and resurrection, the Son of God embraced the whole of human life and history and now dwells in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Faith knows that God has drawn close to us, that Christ has been given to us as a great gift that inwardly transforms us, dwells within us, and thus bestows on us the light that illumines the origin and the end of life.

In faith, we can touch him and receive the power of his grace. Saint Augustine, commenting on the account of the woman suffering from hemorrhages who touched Jesus and was cured, says: “To touch him with our hearts: that is what it means to believe” (Luke 8:45–46). The crowd presses in on Jesus, but they do not reach him with the personal touch of faith, which apprehends the mystery that he is the Son who reveals the Father. Only when we are configured to Jesus do we receive the eyes needed to see him.

—Excerpted from On Faith