6th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2024
Leviticus 13:1-2; Psalm 31(32); 1 Cor 10:31-11:1; Mark 1:40-45
“If you want to, you can cure me.” That is a prayer to keep in mind, not only today, but throughout our lives. It is something which you might usefully incorporate into your daily prayer.
(By the way, is anyone else reminded, by the beginning of the Second Reading, of Status Quo’s song “Whatever you want”? I can imagine St. Paul not writing but singing “Whatever you eat, whatever you drink, whatever you do, whatever you……”)
That prayer of the leper raises two questions for you and me. What is there of which I need to be cured? Do I really want to be cured?
There is every reason why the leper would want to be cured. His disease made him literally an outcast. The instructions are clearly given there in the Book of Leviticus: “As long as the disease lasts, he must be unclean; and therefore must live apart; he must live outside the camp.”
A leper was shunned: s/he became an outsider, and could have no place in the life of the community, social or religious. You no doubt recall the distress caused by the restrictions imposed during the pandemic, when infected people were isolated even within hospital. They were treated by masked doctors and nurses, and were prevented from being visited by their loved ones. Even in death, that isolation continued, as not only they, but anyone who died, was denied a proper funeral. Even those of us who remained well shared the sense of isolation, being unable to travel, to socialise, to take part in any of the normal events of life. This lasted on and off for a couple of years: for a leper, it was a life sentence unless, by some miracle, there was a cure.
Bear in mind that this was the case not only in biblical times. I remember watching, on children’s television in the late 1950s, a serialisation of RL Stevenson’s “The Black Arrow”, in which a hooded “leper” chases the young hero and heroine at a time during the Wars of the Roses. I was terrified, a terror relieved only when the apparent leper was revealed to be Sir Daniel Brackley in disguise. So contagious was the disease that any contact with a leper was likely to create a new victim. Small wonder then that the leper of today’s Gospel was desperate for a cure, or that, having been cured, he wanted to tell his story everywhere and to everyone.
This brings us to our first question: what is there of which I need to be cured? It may be a physical or mental illness, but the Responsorial Psalm points us in another direction. The psalmist rejoices, not in a medical cure, but in the forgiveness of his sins, something for which we pray daily in the Our Father.
You may be familiar with the sense of liberation which can come from a really good confession: the relief of laying our sins before the priest, the representative of both God and the community, and of hearing the words “I absolve you from your sins”. GK Chesterton, the creator of Fr. Brown among other things, wrote “When people ask me….’Why did you join the Church of Rome?’ the first essential answer ….is ‘to get rid of my sins’….When a Catholic comes from Confession, he does truly….step out again into that dawn of his own beginning….He may be grey and gouty, but he is only five minutes old”.
In the light of this I ask again “What is there of which I need to be cured?” Consider the answer carefully. In terms both of illness and of sin, what appears on the surface may be a symptom, rather than the real problem which may lie deeper. If the same sins are cropping up time after time, it may be helpful to ask “What is there deeper inside me which causes me to lose my temper so often, to lie repeatedly, to sin against purity?” Spend a little time simply opening yourself to God in silence and stillness, in order that He may penetrate with His grace your deepest being.
There is, though, for us, a deeper question: do I want to be cured? The leper was in no doubt, but it may be more difficult for us. We may be very much attached to these habitual sins: we may even feel that, without that habitual fault, there would be nothing left of us. Is it so much part of me that, without it, I shall be hollowed out, empty? Will I no longer be myself? That is a question which may cause me to wonder whether I want to be cured.
That is a question which I must face with faith. If I truly believe in God’s love for me, then I can bring before God whatever may be less than good, confident that anything which God takes from me will make me richer, more completely the person that God has created me to be. Then, like GK Chesterton, I may step out into the new dawn, five minutes old.
