Thursday in the First Week in Ordinary Time, Cycle I
1 Sam 4:1-11; Mk 1:40-45
Living with others is no easy task. Sometimes we feel the need of and even enjoy the company of others. However sometimes we just wander off on our own. I am not referring to those times when we look for some time for ourselves, of healthy solitude. In times like these when we are accessible to others around the clock and when our life just seems to become busier, we need time to be alone just as Jesus spent nights alone with the Father.
Rather, I am referring here to another type of wandering-off, and which very often is not something we do physically. It is actually a running away from each other, an escape from one another. It happens when we feel that others are demanding too much of us. We are aware of the needs of those around us - perhaps too aware - such that we fall into the temptation of indifference. "Now what can I do? He has his own life and I have mine!"
I suspect that this was, in a sense, the "illness", of the man with leprosy of the man in today's gospel. We know that leprosy was a contagious disease. The man must have wandered off, willingly or unwillingly, to have contracted the disease, knowingly or unknowingly. We know that the disease was looked upon scornfully by the Book of Leviticus (Lev 13:46) and in the culture of the time, associating it with sin or even with God's punishment. Those afflicted by the disease were not considered to be part of the community any more. They were, in fact, called "the walking corpses." They could give no positive contribution to society, except spreading disease. In the middle ages and later, they were to live on the peripheries of society in communities known as leprosaria.
Yet what we admire in this man is that he does not allow himself to be conditioned neither by his past, symbolised by his disease, and nor by the culture, symbolised by the norms and expectations placed upon him. Instead, he approaches Jesus - something that no leper could ever do (in fact they had to cry out "Unclean, unclean" warning anyone of their approach - and asks him to be cleansed, or in other words, to reintegrate him into the community.
Jesus then makes another unexpected move: out of pity (or rather mercy) Jesus stretches out his hand and performs a very humane gesture: he touches him, healing him while doing so. Jesus takes the man's initiative and transforms it into something much more powerful. He breaks through the barrier of isolation and of death, and fills him once more with a new life.
In other words, Jesus restores the web of relationships within which the man once existed, but which had - for some reason or other lost. No longer is he defined by his illness, but by who he really is. His being sent to the priests to show them that he is healed is not just a fulfillment of a ritual. It is Jesus restores the man's unique place in his community.
No longer does he shout "Unclean, unclean." Now he shouts out the good news that Jesus has brought. In fact, he replaces Jesus. Jesus is no longer welcomed by the villagers, having touched a leper - and so they thought - then he too must be affected by the disease. But in fact, Jesus is now working through the renewed man, who proclaims Jesus's healing power not so much with his words as with his renewed presence.
When we finally come into our selves after wandering off away from the community, we too, like the man with leprosy, turn to Jesus and ask him to restore us within the human family. When we go before Jesus as we are, warts and all, not letting ourselves be determined by our past or by what society expects of us, we are transformed, renewed. We are no longer defined by our sins but by who we are: sons and daughters of God, brothers and sisters to each other, sharers of the same limited human condition, and therefore also sharers of the healing the Jesus has brought to the world through us.
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