Deacon Jerry Franzen CATHEDRAL – FEBRUARY 11, 2024
Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46 1 Corinthians 10:31-11,1 Mark 1:40-45
Praised Be Jesus Christ.
Good Morning.
In recent weeks in the Gospel we have heard of healings by
Jesus:
Last week it was curing the
sick including St Peter’s mother-in-law
and driving out demons.
The week before it was, also,
driving out demons,
and today
its the curing of a leper.
Three Gospel selections out of four from St. Mark’s Gospel on
miraculous signs and we haven’t even left the first chapter of St. Mark’s Gospel.
The second Chapter begins
with the healing of a paralytic.
It seems that from the
outset St. Mark wanted the community
that he wrote for to know that
1. Jesus was the Son of God because He could do amazing things,
2. and that He
took on human form to cure people.
In the first reading, the thirteenth chapter of Leviticus speaks to how one
type of ill person seeking a healing should behave.
A suspected leper had to
travel to the Temple to meet with a priest
who had the final say on whether he truly had leprosy.
If the priest judged that the person truly had leprosy, the leper had to
indicate his repentance by wearing shabby torn clothes, shaving his head
and covering his beard.
He had to live away from the community, maybe partly because the
people thought his condition might be contagious,
but mostly
because he was considered to be unclean.
He had to declare that he
was unclean
to ward off any that
approached him.
I
Why was a priest involved?
In the Jewish community, in order for a person to be a member of the
worshipping community, that person must be clean and pure.
The belief was that the body must be whole, not
diseased,
in order to fully worship God.
There were various circumstances which would make one
unclean.
The priest made the judgment of whether the person was
“clean”
and welcomed as part of the worshipping community
or “unclean” and have to live apart.
Leprosy, as we know it, probably did not exist in the
Mediterranean
region in
the time of Jesus.
It is thought to have originated on the Indian
subcontinent
at
about 1200 AD.
The word “leprosy” is of Greek origin and in that language meant a skin
condition that produces the scab, pustule or blotch described in the first
reading.
So the condition that this “leper” had is probably not leprosy as we know it.
But I want to focus on the use the word “unclean.”
Most think that this was the way the leper warned people to stay away
because this condition called
leprosy was contagious.
That is true; leperosy as we know it is contagious,
but that requires repeated contact over a period
of time.
However, recall the parable of the Good Samaritan.
A man was accosted by robbers who left him for dead.
Both a priest and a levite passed that man by,
but the
Samaritan ministered to his needs.
The actions of the priest and levite are explained as their concern that,
if they touched the injured man, who might have even been dead,
they would be declared “unclean” and could not worship with the community.
According to Mosaic Law, touching a corpse made the person “unclean.”
If an “unclean” person was cured, then he would have go
to a priest
to be declared to be unclean, do whatever the Law described for the
person’s purification and then be declared as “purified” by the priest.
So people had to avoid the lepers, not so much because the condition was
contagious, but because the disease was thought to be bringing about the
death of the leper.
Contact with a person whose death was imminent
was apparently as bad a contact with a corpse.
II
to his normal relationships with his community, his family and with his God.
He was no longer forced to
be an outcast.
Furthermore, it is important
to recognize that Jesus touched him.
The very act of one human
comforting another in touching
is supremely important in the ministry of Jesus.
It illustrates splendidly why God took on our flesh, walked the earth and
died our death to be able to touch humankind, to restore our proper
relationship with God and with others.
I see the “leper” in the
Gospel as a metaphor for us as sinners.
When we sin, we weaken our
relationship with God.
Serious sin removes us far
from God.
Sin also puts up a barrier
in our relationship with others.
When we are in the state of serious, that is mortal, sin, we are separated
from the worshipping community, because we cannot receive the
Eucharist with the others.
This healing, like so many others that Jesus did, went beyond the
physical to heal the relationships of the leper with God and with his
community.
Jesus can still touch us.
There are a considerable number
of accounts in scripture
where Jesus touched
a person and the person was healed.
Last Sunday, we heard how
Jesus touched Peter’s mother-in-law –
took her hand, and she was cured of her fever.
God has given us the sacraments as the means by which Jesus can
continue to touch us.
The sacrament of Penance, in
which the priest stands in for Jesus,
is the means by which we can feel the cleansing touch of
Jesus.
It is a means by which we can go back to zero and be truly “cleansed”
from our sin, to be once again declared “clean” of all sin.
it can also be
a lesson on what we can do for others.
If we do an about face and move from being in the role of the leper
to being a disciple of Jesus, we should be asking the question,
“Who do I consider to be “unclean” and "how can I touch them to help
to make them “clean?”
Who are the outcasts of today?
–
the homeless, the immigrants, the poor, the imprisoned, the addicts,
the unwed mothers, the criminals who have served their sentences.
They are ostracized, considered to be “unclean” for one reason or another.
We might tell our children, our friends and ourselves to stay away from some of them.
BUT, might you hear some of them saying to you, as the leper did to Jesus,
“If you want
to, you can cure me.”
“If you want to, you can help me.”
As a follower of Jesus, what
is our response?
Is it “I will do it” as was
Jesus’ response or at least “I will help.”
or is it more like “Go away, I can’t do that?”
Do we turn a deaf ear to
these cries for help?
There is much that we can do
to help build in them
a relationship to God and His community.
There are soup kitchens, food pantries and homeless shelters to support
with contributions and volunteer activities.
There are programs to help
immigrants to be acclimated
to our environment.
There are agencies like the
St. Vincent de Paul Society,
Rose Garden Mission, Mary Rose Mission, Care Net and the New Hope
Center, Welcome House, and Be Concerned.
We have Catholic Charities
in all of its various ministries.
All of these serve the poor
and marginalized in a variety of ways.
They can always use
contributions both material and monetary
AND volunteer help.
Efforts in jail ministry can
have a big effect on the imprisoned.
The same is true for programs aimed at relieving persons from the
scourge of addiction.
People in these programs need help to restore their right relationships
with their families, their friends, their community and their God.
Lent, which is fast upon us,
is an ideal time to
*“Listen to what God might
be saying to you
– (this is) the God who took our flesh and blood, our mind and heart,
to begin making all relationships
right.”
* Taken from “Bring the
Homeless Poor into Your House?” in “To Be Just is to Love - Homilies for a
Church Renewing” by Walter J. Burghartd, Paulist Press New York NY 2001 p103
