We live in a world surrounded with so many barriers namely ethnic, cultural, racial, even religious. The social distances among the children of God in our world grows bigger each day. Yet this is exactly Christ’s reason for coming down to us, to tear down the walls of religious and cultural separation, exclusion and discrimination among the children of God. He brings down the love that sets free, renews, and heals. As we draw from the lessons of these Sunday readings, let us bring our joy, hopes, sickness, wounds, and expectations to the Lord.
Jesus heals the leper and reinstates him back to the community. Who is God in reality?
By allowing himself to be approached and by touching the leper, Jesus goes against the prescriptions that we heard in the book of Leviticus 13 - The leper will be declared impure and will leave away from the habitation out of the camp. For the Jews in the time of Jesus, purity was the condition to get into a relationship with God. So anyone who was considered to be impure was excluded. No contact with them and all this in the name of God. So in no way was the leper supposed to approach Jesus, and neither was Jesus supposed to touch him. Yet the true miracle was born at the contact between Jesus and this leper who saw in him the Messiah. “A leper came close to Jesus; he begged him and fell on his knees at his feet and said: “If you want, you can purify me”. One can only fall on his knees before God alone.
Moreover, in the time of Jesus, this gesture of the leper is very significant. for in this time, people were fervently expecting the coming of the Messiah who was to inaugurate the new and universal era of happiness and peace, wiping away all tears from their eyes on that mountain (Cf. Is 25: 26-29).
What the leper is asking here from Jesus is that healing promised for the Messianic era. Jesus is indeed the one who not only responds but also fulfils this expectation. “I want to, he says. Be purified”. He will later tell John the Baptist’s disciples to go and report to John the Baptist, “…the things you have seen and heard: that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are risen, the Good news are proclaimed to the poor” (Luke 7:22). We too need the same humility and faith like the leper so that Jesus can act in our lives.
Beyond the healing aspect, the story is a paradigm of long and lasting fight of Jesus Christ against discrimination and exclusion. The Good News preached by Jesus as well as by the leper is that, with Jesus, “No one can be declared impure and excluded in the name of God”. With this healing, all of us who were excluded from God because of our past, have now become “friends of God” and friends of one another. Now if we want to be like God, like the people who listen to the cry of the captives, we should exclude no one. Rather, we must be closer to all.
To resemble God is not about avoiding any contact with others even though they are considered “public sinners”, but it is learning to develop our capacity of loving like Christ.
Like the leper in today’s Gospel may we find a new joy to live in the communion of the Holy Trinity-Father, Son and Holy Spirit!
Happy Sunday!
Fr. Georges Roger Bidzogo SAC
The words of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke 9:23, are often very indicative to me when it comes to how I think, speak and deal with daily struggles and difficulties. “If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me”
Every day seems to be a call to embark on a journey with Jesus. Jesus’ journey is a way of self-denial and sacrifice. It is a way to say no to the pride that speaks louder within me. The way to true happiness and freedom requires a life of discipline and a decision to put my steps in Jesus’ Steps. This automatically implies the crucifixion of one’s self-will, and one’s ways of operating. This may clearly that, every step I take in following Jesus, every step on the way of life, is a step of saying “no” to my own will.
Being crucified with Him
The experience of St. Paul can help us as we approach the season of Lent. Just as Christ was so willing to take up the cross, bearing and even dying upon it, so should we be able to die with him all of our sin. In Romans 6:6, St. Paul affirms that: “knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin” We will make progress in our spiritual life only if we manage to crucify daily the old Adam in us by faithful commitment to Christ. (Cf Romans 6:4, Col 2:12). We are going to commit ourselves through this Lenten season to cease to serve sins as we are able to identify and name them: pornography, lust, gossip, slander, pride, anger, gluttony and envy. It is by crucifying these sins that we are free indeed (John 8: 36).
Happy Sunday!
Fr. Georges Roger Bidzogo SAC