Touching the hem

For anyone wondering why it is that in some parishes the members of the congregation will sometimes reach out and touch the priest's robe as he walks by in procession, here is part of a conversation from the blog Real Live Preacher:

I was also moved by something that happened at the beginning of the service. As the priest walked down the aisle toward the Iconostas, people reached out and touched the hem of his garment. I was told this is common only to the Antiochian Orthodox Church. This is the sort of thing that many Protestants would misunderstand and perhaps be suspicious of. We are historically wary of priests and elevating them too greatly. Remember that the Orthodox Church embraces mystery. So if you are visiting, it is best to be humble and always think the best of what you see. I likened this act to touching the mantle of the Torah as it is carried in Jewish worship to its honored place. The great mysteries of God and the collected prayers of the people are symbolically carried by the priest. Touching his robe is a way, I think, of connecting yourself humbly to such a large mystery. I found myself thinking of the woman who wanted only to touch the hem of the robe of Jesus.

I do not know why the people touch the priests robe. I offer only my impression of what I saw. That was the "mystical" experience I took from it anyway. (source)

Yes Matt [not me], the garments were touhed [sic] during what is called The Great Entrance when the gifts of bread and wine are transferred from the area of preperation [sic] to the Altar.

I do attend St. Joseph's Orthodox Church in Houston and we do commonly reach out and touch the priest or deacon's vestments. This tradition does come back from the woman with the issue of blood who was healed just by touching the hem of the garment of Christ.

Someone asked, if the gifts are not yet consecrated, what are we as Orthodox Christians doing and why? We understand the divinity of Christ, in its totality is such that if Christ touches something, then I can touch Christ by touching that same garment. We know the veracity of this from both the Old Testament (the mantle of Elija) and the New (both the miracles of Christ and we remember the letters of Paul recounting the same) and in our own generations (St. Nektarios of Aegina (1919+) is the first to come to mind who, at his death, while the nuns were changing his garments in the hospital, they laid them on the bed behind and the patient in that bed, upon touching St. Nektarios' clothing was immediately healed). In other words, I am not trying to touch the vestments of Fr. Matthew or Fr. James, or Deacon Mel, I am trying to touch Christ. The reason being is that we understand Christ to be the Physician of our Souls and Bodies and in the eyes of the Church we are all ill, either spiritually, physically or both. By touching something that has touched Christ, I am asking Him: "Lord, I do not even know the ways that I am ill, neither in my soul nor in my body; please heal that in me which is in need of healing. Nevertheless Your will, not mine."

This is an example of physical prayer we use in the Orthodox Church. (source)