Homily Sixth Sunday Year B Jesus heals us from sin
Homily Sixth
Sunday Year B
Reading 1: Both
the first reading and the Gospel talk about leprosy. In those days leprosy was
a highly contagious disease. Because of lack of medical knowledge, they did not
know how a person got leprosy, nor how it was communicated. To protect his
people from destruction by disease, the Lord stipulated certain restrictions. One was to isolate the leper from all contact
with others. Those afflicted had to warn others of their disease and remain in
isolation. We do this today with the present flu epidemic.
Further, if
anyone touched a leper, that person became ritually unclean and needed to go
through certain purification rites.
Today,
leprosy is treatable and under control. But what are we doing with spiritual
leprosy, sin. Sin makes us unclean. It
separates us from the Lord and thus from one another. It is amazing how we are
more concern about physical diseases such as cancer and the flu epidemic than
we are about the spiritual leprosy or cancer of sin. We go to the extremes to
eradicate every cell of cancer to extend our human life. But what do we do to
eradicate the spiritual leprosy of sin, so that we can live eternally with God?
Physical disease can end our physical
existence, but sin could end our eternal existence.
Where
leprosy today is contained and curable, the spiritual leprosy is destroying the
lives of hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world. Do we have a spiritual
horror of this type of leprosy?
Lent is a
time to deal with the leprosy of sin. Not to isolate ourselves from others, but
to isolate ourselves from sin and its consequences. All of us are sinners, but
none of us would go around ringing a bell, letting them know of our spiritual
leprosy.
Gospel: The first thing we heard was that a leper approached
Jesus, which was unacceptable. He was risking rejection. Jesus does the unthinkable and that which is ritually
prohibitive. He touches a leper directly. He risked ritual uncleanliness in
order to heal the man, to reconcile and restore the man back to the community. Jesus was giving God glory by bringing healing
and restoration to the leper.
When we are
in sin, we need to approach Jesus in the Sacrament of Reconciliation so that he
can touch us with the grace of absolution and forgiveness, healing us from what
separates us from God.
There is a
second focus. The man is told not witness to others what Jesus did. Reason? Jesus had not died and risen. People
would focus on part of his mission but not the full reason of his coming,
namely, to be Savior and Lord. The man,
instead, is told to validate his healing by following the ritually prescribed
validation process of having the priest confirm freedom from leprosy.
Instead, the
man did the natural thing. In his excitement of being healed he told everyone
what Jesus had done for him. As a result Jesus could not go about freely
without drawing attention to himself, as more people came for healing. In this
symbolic action, Jesus indicted that to make us whole, to save us from the
leprosy of sin, he would become sin for us and give his life that we may have life.
Jesus had to isolate himself from the community because he healed a leper.
Reading 2:
Paul tells us: “Whatever you do, do for the glory of God….Avoid giving offense
but seek the good of others for their salvation.” In another Letter, Paul said: “Whatever you
do, whether in word or deed, do it in the name of the Lord, giving thanks to
the Father through Jesus.” Either of these sayings could be our Lenten motto:
simple but difficult to achieve, transforming but stretching. What if we made a
conscious intention and be attentive, to live this way, would our life be different?
There is a
connection between the Second Reading and the Gospel. With the weak Paul make
himself weak in order to draw all to God. Jesus saw beyond the leprosy to the
person himself. The man had faith that Jesus could heal him. He knew he was
unworthy even to approach Jesus, but he was desperate. Do we have the same
faith that Jesus can heal us from our spiritual leprosy? What are we willing to
risk?
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