Thursday in the First Week of Ordinary Time, January 11, 2024

Mark 1, 40-45

A leper came to him and kneeling down begged him and said, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched the leper, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.” The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean. Then, warning him sternly, he dismissed him at once. Then he said to him, “See that you tell no one anything, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them.” The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter. He spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly. He remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere.

St. Mark recounts an event similar to one told in Matthew 8, 2-4.  Mark places his account early in the Lord’s ministry and just after saying that “he was preaching in their synagogues and in all Galilee and casting out devils” (Mark 1, 39).  St. Matthew places his account of the Lord healing a leper immediately after delivering the Sermon on the Mount, on a mountain in Galilee, so this could be the same healing.  Of particular note is the Lord’s instruction, “See that you tell no one anything, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them”, and the warning not to tell anyone how he was cured.  St. Matthew provides that in his account.  No where else is it said that Jesus warned a leper not to tell how he came to be healed, and so it seems that the reports are of the same event.  The differences between the contexts of the two accounts point to the possibility that these are not the same cure but the details of the cure itself tell us that they are.  The differences also help us understand the purposes of the two Gospels.  Matthew emphasizes the teachings of Jesus and he sees his miracles as divine approbation of those teachings.  He wants to encourage the early Galilean Christians to hold firm in practicing their new Faith in the face of persecution.  Mark focuses on the Lord’s miracles in order to emphasize the divinity of Christ to newly converted Gentiles in Rome: he is not some mere teacher or philosopher but God himself, which even the Gentile centurion can see at the time of his Death, saying, “Indeed this man was the Son of God” (Mark 15, 39).

In his account, Mark also tells us something Matthew does not: “The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter.”  Later, in Mark 7, 36, Jesus will tell a deaf and dumb man whom he cures to not tell anyone how it happened and he also disobeys him.  We might wonder why would Jesus forbid a person from revealing that it was Jesus who healed him?  And why would he say this to certain people whom he cured while at other times he cures multitudes of people in public places and does not make the same demand?  We can compare this to various times when Jesus forbid the demons from speaking “because they knew him” (Mark 1, 34).  That is, the Lord did not want the testimony of demons, but he also seems careful about the testimony of certain individuals.  Perhaps he knew that they would distort what had happened to the disadvantage of his ministry (as in fact happened at the end of this Reading).  

The mystery of why Jesus gave this command helps us to understand another mystery: that of his unconditional love for us.  Jesus knew from all eternity that this man would disobey him and he still healed him.  He does not let our sinfulness get in the way of his love for us.  We cannot stop Jesus from loving us.  The knowledge of this fact torments the damned in hell.  But it gives us on earth hope.  If we repent we shall experience something of his love for us, which we cannot do while we are in the state of sin: all we can do is know about his love.  But let us be obedient to him now so that we may be fully enveloped by his love in heaven.