WE ARE ALL LEPERS - reflex on Luke 5:12-16

Have you ever experienced a physical issue that you wanted to conceal or minimize? A swollen eye?  A skin rash? Even a blackened fingernail might keep our hands in our pockets.

You know your own hands very well. Look at them and imagine yourfingers bent in unnatural positions, several of them missing, mysteriously“eaten away”. You would probably want to hide them from others. What if yourface were suffering the same mysterious infection? It is likely that others wouldlook away from you or avoid you.

This is a glimpse into the plight of lepers.

Through no fault of their own, lepers have been infected withbacteria that disfigures them completely causing damage to the organs, eyes,limbs, and nerves. Because of the fear of contaminating others, lepers wereconsidered unclean and were not allowed to be in contact with others. Becauseof their disfigurement, they were terrible to look at, and covered themselveseven from their own eyes. They were separated socially, psychologically,spiritually, and emotionally from others, forced to live on the outer edge ofsociety and rely on charity, which they received from a distance. They couldnot be with their families or pray with the community. They were cast aside towatch their disease progressively erode their physical selves.

Who could be in worse shape in the ancient world than a leper?

And yet, we are all lepers, in a sense, because leprosy can be seen as a biblical analogy for sin. Leprosy is to the body what sin is to the soul. Sin disfigures and eats away at our souls, separating us from all that is good and true and beautiful and from one another. Sin drives a wedge in our relationship with God, with other people, and with our own best selves. Sin is the terrible spiritual disease that keeps us from being able to fulfill our true potential in Christ and to live in full communion with God and other people.

That’s the bad news. But the Gospel is Good News, and today’s Gospelproclaims the good news that if we, like the leper, bow down before the Lord,acknowledging that He alone has the power to cure us, and confidently ask to behealed,  we can be free.  Jesus will not hesitate or draw back; He willtouch us with His grace. He says to the leper and to us: “I do will it.” Thisis why he has come to us!

Unlike the leper, we don’t have to wait for the Master to pass by.We have access to Him 24/7. It is up to us to open ourselves to the healingmercy and grace of Christ through prayer and through the Church in theSacrament of Reconciliation.

During these last few days of Christmastime, let us ask for thegrace to open ourselves fully to the infinite mercy Christ came to unleash onthe world, and confidently ask Him to set us free.