Word of the Week

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Leprosy: lepra (Gk.): meaning “leprosy, a most offensive, annoying, dangerous, cutaneous disease, the virus of which generally pervades the whole body, common in Egypt and the East.”

The sacrament of Confession is a cleansing of our spiritual leprosy. Accompanied with prayer, the grace received in this sacrament gives impetus to life in the Spirit and a readiness to loves and serve the Lord (CCC 1310).  Christ, as the divine physician, overcomes the infirmities of man by making them his own. Ultimately, Christ’s compassion heals the divide of body and soul, and reconciles man back with God (CCC 1503-1505).

Leprosy can be found 28 times in Sacred Scripture: 24 in the Old Testament and 4 in the New Testament, all of which are in the form of the above Greek. The OT vision to leprosy is the key that unlocks the importance of Christ healing the leper in the NT. In the old covenant, leprosy was a disease that covered the skin and made each victim unfit to participate in the liturgical assembly. In each case, the Levitical priest, faithful to the law of the old covenant, would examine the condition and pronounce whether or not the leper was clean (Lev.13). Leprosy was seen as a punishment from God for not obeying his law. Furthermore, there was a particular concern to keep everyone who had been defiled and made unclean separate from one who was clean, lest they become infected with the disease (Lev.13:45-46) (Hahn and Minch, 19).  Moreover, it was Mosaic law, that if someone were healed of leprosy, that individual would go before a priest and undertake a sacrifice to be reinstated into the covenant life of Israel (lev.14:1-32). In today’s gospel, Christ, with his outstretched hand, touches and heals the leper. He then commands him to show himself to a priest and to “offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to the people” (Mk.1:40-45; cf. Lk.5:12-14; Mt.8:1-4). This proof is the sacrifice tailored to the leper’s sin, which once performed, would allow him to be reinstated into the covenant harmony with God. Christ ratifies the old covenant procedures of cleansing by inserting the practice of confession as one of the seven sacraments. Christ explicitly places an emphasis for the unclean, although healed by him, to go before a priest in fulfillment of the law of the old covenant. So it is, that all the Christian faithful go before a priest, who in the person of Christ, reinstates us back into the state of grace and covenant harmony.  Recall, that Christ instituted the sacrament of confession and conferred upon the apostles the authority to forgive sins (Jn.20:19-23). In essence, through the ministerial priesthood and the sacrament of reconciliation, Christ’s holiness procures man’s alienation from God.

John Paul II’s vision of the New Evangelization has at its core the dignity of the human person and the call to holiness in constant conversion. The more people of faith that step up in their daily witness, the deeper the impact they will have upon culture and society as a whole. Essentially, at the center of the New Evangelization, is the need to see what we are lacking to see who we are to gain. This quintessence of the New Evangelization is a call to detach ourselves from just not material goods, but also our attachments to power and pleasure. In essence, it is a call to live in both material and spiritual poverty, and once we are present to this overarching truth, we gain awareness to just not the things that surround us, but the people that surround us. In this vein, we can begin to reach out to those who are in the margins of society: the ostracized, marginalized, and institutionalized. In effect, we become Christ to those who are starving for Christ (it is paradoxically true that Christ is serving us in the poor by being the poor). We live in the body of Christ to serve the body of Christ. Just as Christ healed the leper who was repugnant to society, so he heals our repugnancy so that we might serve the leper!

“To see Jesus in the spiritually most deprived person requires a pure heart. The more disfigured the image of God is in a person, the greater must our faith and our veneration be in our search for the face of Jesus and in our ministry of love for him.”

--Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

Primary Texts Consulted

•  Catholic Bible. Suggested trans. Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition.
•  Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Edition, 1997.
•  Hahn, Scott and Minch , Curtis. Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: The Gospel of Mark, RSV, 2nd ed. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2001.

 

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