The Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 11, 2024

Mark 1, 40–45

A leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched him, 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. 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.

The verse preceding todays’s Reading from the Gospel according to St. Mark tells us where, in a general way, Jesus performed this fest of healing: “And he was preaching in their synagogues and in all Galilee and casting out devils” (Mark 1, 39).  Mark records the healing for us as the first one of which we have details since the Lord’s first day of public miracles, so we can anticipate some significance to it.

“A leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him.”  Leprosy is an acutely contagious disease and one which could completely disfigure and cripple the one who contracted it.  The Jewish Law contained very specific rules as to how to treat suspected and confirmed cases of the disease.  Besides the great suffering experienced by the afflicted man or woman, the shame of it must have been very keenly felt, for the leper was bound to keep his distance from the population and if approached by a non-sufferer had to shout, “Unclean!”  Consequently, lepers could not work for a living and depended on the good will of others to provide them food.  Groups of lepers often stayed together for protection and company.  Until modern times no cure or treatment existed for it.  And anyone at all could get it.  One king of Judah caught it and spent the rest of his life alone in a special house built for him while his son governed in his stead.  

The leper in today’s Gospel Reading came to Jesus and knelt down before him.  He probably stayed off the road where Jesus walked, several yards in front of him.  “If you wish, you can make me clean.”  If we think about it, the leper speaks in a strange way if he wants to be cured.  His phrasing comes across as indirect.  A certain hesitancy colors the words.  It is as if the leper knows Jesus can heal him but for him it is probably too great a thing to hope for.  This comes from a life of disappointments, betrayals, and the tragedy of illness.

“Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him.”  Mark does not usually indicate the Lord’s state of mind when approached by someone seeking a favor, so we should pay attention here.  The Lord himself uses it in his Parable of the Wicked Servant, when the master has caught his servant embezzling his money: “And as he had not wherewith to pay it, his lord commanded that he should be sold, and his wife and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made.  But that servant falling down, besought him, saying: Have patience with me, and I will pay you all.  And the lord of that servant being moved with pity, let him go and forgave him the debt” (Matthew 18, 25-27).  The Lord Jesus saw into the man’s depths and saw the physical infirmities and also the inner pain he had suffered.  It is the Lord looking down on us, helpless to overcome or repair our wounded human nature and falling deeper into sin every day, and being moved with pity for us, a pity that led to practical action (for otherwise pity is only self-indulgence).

“I do will it. Be made clean.”  The Lord shows his willingness to heal him, and gives a command: Be made clean.  We see the Lord addressing others in similar cases in this way: “Take up your bed and go into your house” (Mark 2, 11).  That is, the Lord requires the one to be healed to also will this.  A person cannot be cured against his or her will, nor without active participation in the reception of the cure.  The leper said to the Lord, “If you wish.”  The Lord replied, “Be made clean” — be willing to be made clean, which is clear since he cannot make himself clean.  “The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean.”  The leprosy “left him” as though it had possessed him, is now dispossessed, and can go along until it finds another victim.  The worst sins we can commit are forgiven — leave us — “immediately” when, full of remorse for them, we go to the Sacrament of Penance, confess them, and are absolved by the priest.  If we could see with our eyes the effect absolution has on our souls we would be staggered. 

“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 Law foresaw that cases of cures would arise, though the Old Testament only relates the healing of the Gentile Balaam, and it prescribed in detail what the cured man should do if this happened.  He had to go before the priest in the Temple, for one thing, and make various sacrifices.  The rite of purification lasted eight days, at the end of which the priest declared the man to be clean (cf. Leviticus 14, 1-32).  Jesus is saying to the man that he should abide by the Law, for Jesus himself worked within it, and receive official recognition of his cure.  This Jesus ordered him to do for the man’s benefit, as though to show him that he indeed was free of the disease. “See that you tell no one anything.”  It may be that the Lord meant to say nothing to anyone until after the rite of purification so that the rite was not put off or impeded.  “The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter.”  He acts ungratefully in doing this.  Jesus did not charge him money or put him under service for his priceless gift of health, but the man does not even obey the one thing Jesus does want from him.  Since Jesus knew he would do this, we see his mercy, for he extends it even to those who will soon forget it or the one who offered it to them.  “He spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly.”  That is, a Galilean town.  The population would get news that he was approaching him and they would surround him outside their town, pleading for cures, so that he could not move: “He remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere.”  Uninhabited places.  We might think here of how the Lord was taken outside Jerusalem to be crucified in a deserted place, and that “people kept coming to him from everywhere.”  We can go to him in a “deserted place”, our humbled and contrite hearts and profess faith that he can cure us from our sins if he wills, and that we are willing for him to do this for us.