Sunday 11th of February 2024 - the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Leviticus 13:1-2,44-46/ Psalm 31(32)/ 1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1/ Mark 1:40-45

The lockdowns imposed during the COVID pandemic brought home to us how important personal human contact can be. For fear of contagion and the understandable desire to protect the most vulnerable extreme measures were taken, the results of which were not fully foreseen. Many people, especially those in care homes and least able to understand it, found themselves deprived of the human contact of carers, friends, and family. Isolated in their homes and only spoken to through masks and visors and visited, if at all, by family on the other side of windows or doors. The human touch, the hug, the handshake, even the smile was denied in the cause of limiting a perceived greater threat. With hindsight, for many the restrictions were more damaging in the long term than the risk of infection might have been.

In the eighties the world was grappling with the emerging disease of HIV/AIDS which also isolated and even alienated many of those suffering from it. There was a fear of contamination causing sufferers to be ostracized from society and even judged for their apparent lifestyle choices. Diana, Princess of Wales, famously brought home to society how important the personal touch is by visiting and shaking hands with HIV/AIDS sufferers.

The first reading today prescribes how people believed to be suffering from the contagious skin disease of leprosy were to be dealt with by society. If diagnosed, sufferers were outcast from their communities for fear of contagion, but they were also often judged that they had brought on their suffering through sinfulness. Anything other than full health or even wealth was considered a consequence of living an unholy life. Sufferers were in some way not worthy of living in society and were looked down upon or even driven out completely.

It was to the outcast and marginalised that Jesus focused his mission. He was often found among the people considered least worthy in society, the sinners, reviled collaborators with Rome, widows, and yes, lepers. In the Gospel today Jesus is approached by a leper who is polite, respectful but insistent in asking Jesus for help, saying, ‘if you want to you can cure me’. Full of compassion, replying, ‘of course I want to’, Jesus reached out to this outcast, unclean, person and by touching him cured him instantly of his affliction. As always with Jesus we witness God working directly and intimately among us. No one is beyond the reach and touch of Jesus who brings, love, compassion, and healing to all who ask for it.

The leprosy of sin makes us outcasts from God and his community. Jesus seeks us out no matter how far away we might have taken ourselves. As with the leper we must ask for healing, but we know that Jesus is ready and willing to reach out to us, touch us, and heal us from the plague of sin. Through the loving compassion of a God who truly wants to heal us we can be reunited with Him and our community of faith. Jesus became human to be present to us, to live among us, to reach out and touch us, to heal us of our sins. We are cured by Jesus and reintegrated into God's love through his personal touch and his willingness to do it. For our part we must be ready to acknowledge our faults and failings and willingly come to Jesus asking for his healing.

Society today is quick to exclude people as social lepers. As Christians we are called, as Paul points out in his letter, to never do anything offensive to anyone, to do everything for the glory of God taking Jesus as our model as Paul did. Respect for the human person is paramount putting aside any social prejudices with no exclusion by nationality, race, gender, sexual orientation, class, or any other division. We must seek to reintegrate the marginalized showing love and compassion to all, bringing God to the world around us through everything that we do, following the example of Jesus, bringing his healing touch to all without exception.

God Bless Brendan.