A most important cultural-religious element at work in the appropriation of Catholicism has to do with “feeling” as a manner of perception. The language of popular religiosity is “body language.” It understands realities and expresses its deepest feelings and thoughts through this language because the body “feels.” The various senses enable the body to truly experience and to communicate. It is important to recognize the significance of bodily knowing (=understanding) and bodily language (=communicating). The body knows, and the body communicates through integrated sensing and expressing. When it is at ease, the body relaxes; when it senses tension, there is rigidity in behavior. Quite often bodily pains are the body’s way of communicating that there are things that need to be attended to in our deepest selves. Modern society is only too familiar with emotionally induced illnesses.
The greatest awareness in families takes place through touch, being touched and touching (bodily knowing and communicating). Is it not at times the most precious mutual awareness of each other that one has? Think for a moment of how a newly born baby primarily knows that he or she is welcome and loved. Certainly, not by sight because the new eyes are not functional for some time; not by hearing a language because that still has to be learned. How then? By touch, by the embrace and cuddling of parents, the sound of their voices which increasingly become familiar, as well as the warmth and smell of their bodies -- all these so closely intertwined with each other -- giving a total bodily word which is received as love. ®
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