The Church’s old catechisms used to tell us that we reach the age of reason at roughly age seven. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that at one level, that’s true, we can be responsible for ourselves then in a way we couldn’t when we were toddlers or in kindergarten. But it takes a lot longer than age seven, a lifetime, really, to be in full ownership of ourselves. And so, at another level, we might better peg the age of reason sometime after age 30, when we have a more responsible sense of who we are, what our lives mean, and what decisions we need to make to bring life to ourselves and theirs. It takes a long time before we can be really responsible. But there’s a further problem, by the time we reach maturity, we have also lost some vital, life-giving parts of ourselves. By the time we get to possess ourselves, all of us have been wounded and shamed in our enthusiasm, and parts of our bodies and our souls have died and turned cold. By the time we get to be more fully in possession of ourselves, we are no longer whole. We are all familiar with the story of a woman who, we are told, had been suffering from internal hemorrhaging for twelve years and had spent all her money on doctors without getting any better, approaches him surreptitiously, saying to herself: “If I but touch the hem of his garment, I will be healed!” She does just that and, the gospels tell us, instantly the flow of blood stopped. Touching Jesus did for her what doctors couldn’t do, it stopped her internal hemorrhaging. What Jesus does is give back to this woman the possibility of giving life, in one case by stopping the flow of blood and in the other by starting it. How do we, like the woman, touch the hem of the garment to be healed? Willpower, while important, is not enough. Only by touching some higher power, and this is most easily done inside a community, can we change our lives. Therapy too is helpful to a point, but only to a point. In the end, the power to give life can only be restored to us through grace and community, through letting a power beyond give us something that we cannot give to ourselves.