Jesus stretches our capacity for compassion. He challenges our idea of what is true love.

 

Sixth Sunday in OT B 2021

“Unclean, unclean!”  From today’s first Scripture reading, the leper must cry out:  “Unclean, unclean.”  The leper not only lives with his disease, the leper must also live an isolated, separated life cut off from the community.

Mother Theresa said:  “The biggest disease is not leprosy or tuberculosis but rather the disease of being unwanted.”  Leprosy was the most dreaded of all diseases at that time because it separated people from their family and their community and thus constituted a “living death.”  The leper was exiled from “healthy” human society.

Even today the very word leprosy has a harsh and intimidating sound to it.

In contrast to living with this stigma and separation from society, the leper in the Gospel account came to Jesus, begging on his knees, saying, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” Jesus is the one who brings healing, who welcomes people into his embrace, and who proclaims a new way of living. Jesus responds, “I do wish.  Be made clean.”

Could there have been more perfect scriptures to prepare ourselves for our Lenten journey?  For each of us, if we honestly look at our inmost hearts and daily lives, must confess at least something, like the Gospel’s leper, that needs to be made clean.  And to each of us, may we hear the words of Jesus spoken to the Gospel leper, “I do will it.  Be made clean.”

Our leprosy is the sinfulness of our lives that separates us from God’s love.  In our Lenten journey, indeed may we turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.

Today’s Gospel prepares us for our Lenten journey of 40 days.  We begin this Wednesday with ashes placed on the crown of our heads.  We are to   “Repent and believe the Gospel.”  With these ashes, we acknowledge that we belong to the order of penitents.  We stand in need of the Lord’s healing forgiveness.  In our Lenten journey, we embrace the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, and alms giving.  In turning from sin, we seek the conversion experience of placing God first in our lives.

 We begin this Lenten season by acknowledging our own leprosy that separates us from a fuller experience of God’s love in our lives.  In this Lenten season, may we celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation in a grace-filled way.  I like to think of this beautiful sacrament as whispering into the ears of our merciful and compassionate God the story of our life including the spiritual leprosy of our sinfulness.  In the sacrament of reconciliation, we are not just listing our sins, we are sharing that part of the story of our life in which Jesus is not yet Lord. Then the words of Jesus are spoken to us:  “I do will it.  Be made clean.”  May the sacrament of reconciliation be a component of your Lenten spiritual journey.

As I pray over this Gospel, I can’t help but see the comparison between leprosy and Covid-19.  Similar to leprosy, this pandemic is keeping us isolated and preventing us from being connected to each other as much as we would like.  Those who have the virus need to be isolated, quaranteed from the community. 

But please God, covid-19 doesn’t keep up separated from our merciful, loving God.  God’s mercy and love is the final word in our spiritual journey.

Further, as we pray over this Gospel, we also need to reflect on our attitudes with the people in our lives whom we find undesirable – as lepers in the sense we don’t want anything to do with them.  We want to keep them separated from us.

We live in a world of suffering: suffering caused by diseases, suffering caused by the exclusion of people, suffering caused by greed and jealousy. But rather than just say that is ‘the lot of humanity’ we look towards Jesus who seeks to reconcile and to forgive and to heal. To belong to this parish community is to recognize the mystery of God’s forgiveness and healing made visible to us in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

We need first to do an inventory to see if there are folks who would feel unwelcome in our Church.  Who, if they walked in our door this minute, would feel the questioning stares of others?

 Jesus stretches our capacity for compassion.  He challenges our idea of what is true love.

Each of us has a great capacity for love, the pity is that it often goes unused.  We have in our power to reach out to those who are suffering the pain of rejection each day all around us.  We could enkindle new hope, we could bring back the zest for living in someone else, and if we do, we mirror dimly the infinite compassion of God.

We ask God humbly for the grace to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and to reach out to those whom society treats as lepers.

To the extent that we are judgmental and prejudge others, whether they are immigrants whom we consider undesirables, whether their sexuality is different than ours, whether their way of looking at religion is different than ours, we are in need of Christ’s healing touch.  We need to be able to see Christ in others, to have Christ’s compassion for the powerless, the poor, the hurting in mind, body, and spirit.  We need to get to the place where we are able to “kiss the leper” of our day.

May we see ourselves as a Church that is a hospital for sinners, rather than a hotel for saints.  We all need healing.  That is what the ashes on our foreheads this Ash Wednesday signify. 

Today we remind ourselves that Jesus entered into this suffering world bringing healing and peace, and that he has called us to carry on this work of reconciling people to one another and to the Father.   May the grace of  this upcoming Lenten season bring us the reconciliation that Jesus offers us, and may we, in the name of Jesus, bring healing and reconciliation into the lives of those most in need.

Have a blessed day.