The cleansing of a leper

Our Sunday Gospel today continues with the healing ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ in Galilee. You can read it in your Bible in Mark 1:40-45.    “A leper came to Jesus] [and kneeling down] begged him and said, If you wish, you can make me clean.” 41 Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand touched him, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.” 42 The leprosy left him immediately and he was made clean. 43 Then warning him sternly, he dismissed him at once.

44 Then 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.” 45 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 remain outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere.”

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This gospel story is very intriguing, first because of the humility of the leper when he asked the Lord Jesus, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” In those days in Palestine, when one gets leprosy, it didn’t matter what was his former status in life… whether he was a priest, a soldier or an ordinary man, when one had leprosy, that person became an outcast. More often than not, people who have become outcasts of society lose any sense of good conduct or manners. Hence, you would have expected the leper to demand to Jesus that he be cured. But this leper showed only humility while kneeling.

If you saw that epic 1959 MGM movie by William Wyler “Beh-Hur,” you will get a glimpse of the leper colony where Ben-Hur’s mother and sister had to live as outcasts in a cave. Leprosy was a disease that was so contagious; those who get it had to be separated from the rest of society and placed in a leper colony. In Cebu, we too had our own leper colony. But often, some lepers leave their colony to beg for food, as they have no one to feed them.

This was the scenario that we saw in today’s gospel, and there was no question that the Sacred Heart of our Lord Jesus took pity on the leper and made him clean. Of course, he sternly told the leper not to tell anyone about this, but human as we are, the tendency is to tell our friends. I guess our Lord Jesus knew that the man he cured would not be silent about the great blessing that fell on him.

One important facet of this story was when our Lord Jesus Christ told the now cured leper, “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.” Perhaps you wonder why the Son of God cured a leper and yet, he asked the man to show himself to the priests to offer a cleansing that is prescribed in their church laws, which in those days were Jewish law prescribed by Moses.

This is one scripture passage, which makes our other Christian brethren who separated from the Catholic Church very uncomfortable because they thought that during the age of reformation, the Protestants have finally done away with the priesthood or the clergy whom many people in those days hated. In truth, it’s the same devil that tried to tempt our Lord Jesus Christ that continues to hate the priests 2,000 years later.

It was the same cunning serpent that seduced Eve not to obey God anymore and eat the fruit of the tree of life despite the warning from God himself that it would lead to their death.

A good friend of mine loaned me a book entitled “A Crisis of Truth” The Attack on Faith, Morality and Mission in the Catholic Church by Ralph Martin written in the 1980s and much of the problems he mentions are still with us today. When priests are caught in some kind of sex scandal, the mainstream news puts it in the headlines as if he committed a heinous crime. Yet this happens to lesser mortals everyday and it doesn’t even cause a stir.

A relation of ours for instance confided to me that they have left the Catholic Church and have become evangelical. I told her in no uncertain terms that she has lost the blessings of the Holy Eucharist, which is central to our Catholic Faith. Yet, she told me that I was wrong, because they too receive Holy Communion. I thought for a while and said, “Really?”

Thus I replied to her that what they were receiving was nothing but a piece of bread as only ordained priests “In persona Christi” (in the person of Christ) have the power to consecrate a piece of bread, which becomes the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. If Jesus finds priests of great use for the Church, why can’t Christians?

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