To touch even the fringe of Jesus' coat brought healing to the sick who were carried into his presence. Of course it wasn't just the touching alone that healed - as Jesus often remarked, it was their faith that cured people. At times it may have been a very rudimentary faith, but it grew strong with the presence and words of Jesus. For He allowed for the human expectation and desire of actually touching, feeling, seeing, hearing someone with healing powers, in order to be cured.

As St Thomas found out after Jesus' resurrection, it's not our physical human senses of seeing, hearing, feeling, touching, tasting that now allow us to touch and see our Risen Lord. Faith does not depend on these. We are blessed in believing, even though we have not seen or heard or touched or felt or tasted. Those words refer to material things, things we "sense." In the gift of faith, we see and hear and feel and touch (and are touched by) the Lord in a real but different way.

Yet He does also humour us. He makes allowance for our human feelings, even when we sometimes try to support or strengthen our faith by using material things that are 'holy'. It is not the fringe of his coat that we use now, but things associated with holy people (a relic or a cross used by a saint), places made 'holy' by events that happened there as in places of pilgrimage. But in all these, what matters always is the faith that asks for help and for healing.