Jesus heals the leper
It's the 6th Sunday in Ordinary time and our gospel this Sunday is similar to last Sunday's gospel, where we learned that our Lord Jesus Christ is a healer and a preacher. Yet he wasn't schooled in medicine or as a rabbi, but people were amazed at the authority he gives when he preaches to them about the Kingdom of heaven. If the preaching doesn't amaze someone, Jesus wows all of them when he heals the sick, cures the blind, and lets the lame walk again. No one has ever done this before in Israel. So let's read today's gospel, which you can read from Mark 1:40-48.
"A leper came to Jesus and begged him, "If you want to, you can make me clean." Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, "I do want to: be clean!" As Jesus sent the man away, he sternly warned him, "Don't tell anyone about this, but go and show yourself to the priest and for the cleansing bring the offering ordered by Moses; in this way you will give to them your testimony."
However, as soon as the man went out, he began spreading the news everywhere, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter any town. But even though he stayed in the rural areas, people came to him from everywhere."
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What was the prescription for lepers as ordained by Moses? You can read this in the 1st reading on Lev. 13:1-2, 44-46, "Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron, "If someone has a boil, an inflammation or a sore on his skin, which could develop into leprosy, he must be brought to Aaron the priest, or to one of the priests, his descendants. This means that the man is leprous; he is unclean.
The priest shall declare him unclean; he is suffering from leprosy of the head. A person infected with leprosy must wear torn clothing and leave his hair uncombed; he must cover his upper lip and cry, 'Unclean, unclean.' As long as the disease lasts he must be unclean; and therefore he must live away from others; he must live outside the camp."
Today's gospel tells us that our Lord Jesus Christ was moved with pity when he was approached by a leper who asked him in all humility, "If you want to, you can make me clean." Leprosy in ancient times was a debilitating disease that affected the rich and the poor alike. If one was rich and haughty and was stricken with leprosy, he becomes an outcast to society and has to live in a leper colony outside their camps. If you recall, the order by Moses was given at that time of their 40-year long march from Egypt to the Promised Land, which is why the lepers were placed outside their camps.
Somehow, that particular leper roamed the streets and met our Lord Jesus Christ and I'm sure that he must have heard about this Jesus of Nazareth who have cured the sick because his reputation was known far and wide in Israel. The leper had faith that Jesus was a healer and he only showed his humility and said, "If you want to, you can make me clean." This wasn't a demand for healing; rather it was accepting the reality that if God so wills it, the leper can become clean.
This is the reason why our Lord Jesus Christ took pity of this leper, then he touched him and said, "I do want to: be clean!" Then the Lord gave the newly healed leper two orders, first for him not to tell anyone about his healing and the second one he said to him, "Go and show yourself to the priest and for the cleansing bring the offering ordered by Moses; in this way you will give to them your testimony."
Remember when people say, (yes including some who say that they are Catholics) that they no longer need a priest because they can go and pray directly to God himself? When you hear people say that, you should remind them of today's gospel passage because no less than our Lord Jesus Christ himself told the leper whom he had already healed… that he should go to the priest so that the priest who declared this man as a leper and thus unclean, can undo that declaration and consequently declare the leper to be clean and be accepted back into Jewish society.
However, that leper violated the first command of our Lord, not to tell anyone about his being healed. Yet despite this stern warning from our Lord, surely the leper was so overcome with joy, he had to tell perhaps his family that he had been healed and therefore he can return to his family instead of living a life with his fellow lepers.
But the purpose of our Lord to keep his healing a secret was for him to be able to heal more sick people and not be disturbed by the entire community that needed healing. Because the leper told his healing story, whenever people learn that Jesus was about to enter their village…a throng of sick people greeted him and thus his reputation as a great healer grew.
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