Today I am going to tell you about the time I had the honor of touching Taylor Swift’s hand. I’m not just bragging, I promise this story has a point. It was at her Stadium Tour stop in New Orleans. I was at her concert with my friend Blaine, another huge Taylor Swift fan. (Yes, I am unashamedly a Swifty or whatever they’re called. I have been a fan since her first album and I think she is one of the more talented song-writer’s of our generation). Blaine and I PLOTTED how we could end up in one of the coveted spots along where she walked through the crowd at each show. We sat on the phone trying to book tickets for a while before taking our best guess as to which seats where the closest to her walkway. We arrived at the concert and went to our seats. We stood through part of the openers scoping out the availability of space standing along the railing of her pathway. We ended up in a little corner that was really part of a walkway to get to seats that was along the path Taylor would cross about half-way through the concert. We stood there, beginning in the opening acts, claiming our spots along the pathway. We sang and danced and enjoyed the concert. About a song or two before Taylor would begin to walk through the crowd people began to crowd along the railing. It began to get uncomfortable but we held our ground and stayed in our place. Then it happened. She got off the stage and began to walk through the crowd. Her pathway was wide but small enough that she could grab people’s hands on both sides. With all the hands around me I thought surely, she will miss mine. In that moment I wanted her to touch my hand more than anything else in the world. As she slowly moved closer I found myself cheering and screaming in spite of myself. Then she was right there. She grabbed my hand. It was only for a brief moment but it felt like much longer. She squeezed my hand and moved on but in that moment I felt the love she has for her fans. She is a big star. She does not have to walk through the crowd like that. I’m sure it is an incredibly overwhelming experience to have people reaching out from all directions, desperately trying to touch you. But she loves her fans and she wants them to feel that love. She wants to connect with as many of them as possible. So she created this pathway to do just that. After she squeezed our hands, Blaine and I turned to each other and I remember I was just crying. All because a celebrity, who I had been a fan of for years, touched my hand.
As I was thinking back on this experience I began to wonder, what would life be like if we were super-fans of Jesus? If we plotted and planned anything we could to get close to Him? To See Him? Jesus also loves His “fans”. He also wants to do everything He can to get close to us. That’s why He makes Himself available in the Eucharist every single day. Y’all each week at Mass we have the opportunity to touch Jesus, to have an intimate relationship with him. Each time we go to Eucharistic Adoration, it is like Jesus is inviting us to a private concert. He wants to make Himself available to us. He wants to be adored by us. But in the same way He adores us on a much more personal level than any celebrity or even human person ever could. What if we went crazy for Jesus in the same way we go crazy over celebrities? What if we let Jesus dictate the trends we follow and the plans we make the same way celebrities do? What would life be like if we were able to comprehend the fullness of Jesus in the Eucharist?
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