Holyrood Church 715 West 179 Street, Upper West side Manhattan, USA, 212-923-3770

Jesus transgresses the rules of his religion and touches the leper

 

 

Good morning, happy Thursday, and many blessings.

 

There is a lot of compassion and radicalism in today’s Gospel (Mark1:40-45). Accepting and curing the leper, Jesus reveals a new face of God. A leper came near Jesus. He was an excluded, impure person. He should be far away. Anybody who touched him would also become impure! But that leper had great courage. He transgresses the norms of religion in order to be able to get near Jesus. He calls out: “If You want, You can heal me. You need not touch me! It suffices that You want, and I will be healed!” This phrase reveals two evils: a) the evil of leprosy which made him impure; and b) the evil of solitude to which he was condemned by society and by religion. It also reveals the great faith of the man in the power of Jesus.

 

Jesus is profoundly moved and cures both evils. In the first place, in order to cure solitude, He touches the leper. It is as if He said: “For Me, you are not an excluded one. I accept you as a brother!” And then He cures the leper saying: “I want it! Be cured!” The leper, in order to enter into contact with Jesus, had transgressed the norms of the Law. Jesus, in order to be able to help that excluded person and therefore reveal a new face of God, transgresses the norms of His religion and touches the leper. At that time, whoever touched a leper became impure according to the religious authority and by the law of that time.

 

In other words, Jesus and the leper broke with legalism making it clear that the justice of compassion is more important. Remember that the legalistic person is the one who is concerned with applying the laws in an explicit and literal way, whether human or religious, putting the law before everything.

 

Definitely, this man must have been overwhelmed by gratitude - he did the very thing Jesus asked him not to do! Help me Lord to receive the gifts you offer, to rejoice in them but never to forget that they come from you. Jesus, the compassionate one, enters fully into the human mess of our lives. Leprosy was the most dreaded of diseases in his day. Jesus risks conflict and division for the sake of a nobody who was suffering exclusion and isolation from family and community.

 

In your prayer today tell Jesus of some way you were hurt or wounded by something people said or did to you. Listen to how sensitive and responsive he is when he is “moved with pity” or compassion for you. Tell him how you feel about him being like this. I wonder, if I spend a few moments with the leper before his cure, and then meet him afterwards. What might he say to me about faith in Jesus? About my pity for others in need? Whom do I touch?

 

Also, if to proclaim the Good News means to give witness to the experience of Jesus that one has. What does the leper announce? He tells others the good that Jesus has done to him. This witness leads others to accept the Good News of God which Jesus brings to us. What is the witness that you give?

 

Blessings,

 

Fr. Luis+

Date news: 
Thursday, January 14, 2021 - 15:15

Ministry at the time of Coronavirus (Covid 19): Prevent, cure and accompany

Now we have to shape what some have started calling; The Church at Home. Although I keep asking myself; What do those who do not have a home do? For this reason, at the same time, I am declaring today in our Holyrood Church a Lenten day of prayer, fasting and reading the Bible in the Time of the Coronavirus.

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