The Leper

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

As so often happens with biblical readings, those of today are both history and allegory.

Moses was told what to do with lepers. They were to be proclaimed as unclean, and cast outside the Israelite camp. Here we see an image of the ejection of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, after their sin. All disease and uncleanliness came into the world with original sin–and more importantly, with sin, we were ostracized from the easy friendship with God that Adam and Eve enjoyed.

But with Christ, all that changes. In the gospel we see how. Simply, Jesus cures the leper. He leaves him clean, without blemish. The leper is told to keep it to himself, but he is exploding with joy. Everywhere he goes, he proclaims what God has done for him.

We must be realistic. With His death and Resurrection, Jesus did not remove all pain, suffering, and disease from Christians. With all the healing He did in life, we might have expected this to occur through the power of His Resurrection–but He did not come to overthrow Adam by utterly reversing the consequences of original sin. He came to rescue Adam, by opening for him–and us–again the door to life that Adam had closed.

But nonetheless, the time of salvation is now. Christ is healer, in our lives, now. If we gamble all on Him, if we make our relationship with Him our top priority, He will remove misery from our lives and put happiness in its place. It is not that we will have nothing to endure; what we do endure, we will bear full of His peace and joy, until that time when all suffering ends and we are united with Him forever in Heaven.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to come and heal your heart. To heal it of all the scars left by abuse you have received. To heal it from its attachments to sin. And then, to transform it into a catalyst for the healing of others.