Sunday Meditation: Touching the Leper

This Sunday we complete the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel.  Last week Jesus completed His first day of ministry as presented in Mark, and it was a long day of healings.  Then we saw Him seclude Himself on a mountain to pray and, when the apostles found Him, He led them to new towns to preach.  In today’s Gospel reading, in a new town Jesus comes across a leper. 

 

A leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said,

“If you wish, you can make me clean.”

Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand,

touched him, and said to him,

“I do will it. Be made clean.”

The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean.

Then, warning him sternly, he dismissed him at once.

 

He said to him, “See that you tell no one anything,

but go, show yourself to the priest

and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed;

that will be proof for them.”

 

The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter.

He spread the report abroad

so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly.

He remained outside in deserted places,

and people kept coming to him from everywhere.

~Mk 1:40-45

These healings are not just miracles.  They are symbolic for absolving of sin, and if the healing is analogous to the absolution, then the illness is analogous of a sin.  Bishop Barron presents a wonderful homily explaining it.

 

“If you wish, you can make me clean,” the leper says.  What is he doing?  He is supplicating himself, supplicating himself in faith.  Supplicating faith.  How do you say that in, Latin fiducia supplicans?  Yes, I believe so.  As Bishop Barron asks, “who are the lepers of today’s society?”

 

Meditation: "Moved with pity, He stretched out his hand, touched him.”