SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (2024)
Readings:
Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46
Psalms 32:1-2, 5, 11
1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1
Mark 1:40-45
It was in 1959 that I was given my first insight into the plight of what was suffered by those who had the unfortunate occasion to contract the disease of leprosy. No, I didn’t meet any lepers in our small city of Pittsfield! The beauty of a small Catholic school in the very center of the town was that it had the opportunity to take advantage of the movie theaters which dotted the downtown area, well within walking distance of the Church and schools. On more than one occasion the good sisters, after eeking out a bargain with the movie theater owners, would arrange for a special school-day showing of some of the most epic of religious presentations. Ben Hur was just such an epic. The entire movie fascinated me, but with my increasing religious proclivities, it was the last half of the movie, after the Intermission, that held some of the most moving scenes of the movie. After Ben Hur triumphs over his nemesis Messala (in a startlingly realistic chariot race which surely helped the movie win at least one of its 11 Academy Awards), he goes in search of his mother and sister, who have suffered much because of being related to Ben Hur. He learns that while in prison they have contracted leprosy, and, as our first reading from Leviticus indicates, they are living apart from others in a camp outside the city. Ben Hur eventually works up the courage to make himself known to them, and with the scene juxtaposed with Jesus’ death on Calvary, the women are healed of their leprosy by the death of Jesus on the cross. Their time of being ostracized from others was over. This fictional account of people living with leprosy taught me much about what is frequently referenced in the gospels.
Our healing miracle in the first chapter of Mark’s gospel once again enforces the notion that this Jesus of Nazareth is ushering in a time of fulfillment, a time when evil spirits are subject to Him. The same power used to heal Simon’s mother-in-law, is, in today’s gospel, used to heal one of the most devastating illnesses at the time of the gospels. No doubt many suffered the effects of being ostracized for nothing more than a skin rash.
One other personal anecdote. After 1959 I would not experience a genuine insight into leprosy until I experienced the fear engendered by the AIDS epidemic in the mid 1980s. I learned that the brother and son of a family I was very close to had contracted AIDS. I generally only saw the brother at Christmas time, when he would come home to Manchester, NH, from Arizona to visit with family. Since the family lived so close to the monastery, I spent many a Christmas Eve at their home until I had to leave for the midnight Mass (actually at midnight!). There were several Christmases that Danny did not come home for Christmas. I would learn later that that was due to the disease. When he finally did move home to be cared for by his family his presence was a secret, partially because of the stigma associated with the disease. The secret was eventually shared with me, and when Danny went into the hospital, I was informed that I could go to visit him. I admit to some trepidation, for the media and ignorant people who fear what they know nothing about, virtually ostracized AIDS patients, and told people to keep their distance, even though it was made known from the beginning that the disease was not easily transmitted. When I entered his hospital room I did what I did every Christmas Eve, and I embraced Danny, a shadow of the robust man I once knew. He later told his mother it had been a long time since he was touched by anyone other than the hospital staff.
Leprosy at the time of Jesus, AIDS in the early eighties, separated people from one another. It is why the account in today’s gospel is so interesting. Leviticus makes it clear that the leper is unclean, to be shunned and not admitted to worship, and the book also makes it clear that anyone who the leper touches is made unclean, and anyone who touches the leper makes themselves unclean. And what does Jesus do? The same hand that reached out to Simon’s mother-in-law last weekend and raised her up to health, is that same hand that reaches out to the leper, and “He touched him,” risking making Himself unclean. This is the first miracle in Mark where Jesus reaches out to the marginalized, the ostracized. Lepers had no place in the societies of the first century; Jesus can fix that and make them whole.
The Lenten season will interrupt the regular reading of the Gospel of Mark, but when it resumes in the summer the Jesus of Mark’s gospel will make it clear that the purification laws of the old covenant are obsolete, and that what goes into a man is incapable of making that man unclean. It’s what comes from the heart that makes one unclean, and separates us from Jesus. It’s not that the love of God stops, it’s that it cannot penetrate a heart hardened by sin. The man Jesus cures in today’s gospel knew he was taking a risk to approach the preacher. He knew he was considered unclean; he knew what his condition was. Yet, with boldness he hollered out to Jesus, with the firm hope that Jesus could make him whole. As we approach this Eucharist, may we possess the same hope and confidence of the leper, knowing that no matter what we have done Jesus can make us clean, cleansing us of all that is sinful.
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