“Healing Sin: Leprosy of the Soul” - 6th Sunday OT (B) – 2.11.24

St. Mark the Evangelist Parish (Cranberry/Butler, PA)

Mass Readings- https://bible.usccb/bible/readings/021124.cfm

By: Fr. David Schmidt

In today’s Gospel we have the story of Jesus healing the leper. As we know, leprosy is a skin disease that causes scabs and boils to develop on a person’s skin, and it is a cause of great suffering.

In the OT, in order to worship in the Temple, one had to be ritually clean. A person became ritually unclean for various reasons such as: eating unclean food or touching a dead body or something diseased.

Those who became unclean had to be cut off from the community and Temple worship because nothing that was defiled or unclean could enter the Temple of God because God’s Temple, which is the dwelling place of God, is pure and holy. Nothing unclean could come across anything clean without defiling it.

Lepers, because of their disease, were considered unclean, so if the leper touched anyone else, then that person would be unclean as well.

This is why when someone was unclean they would yell “Unclean! Unclean!” So people would stay away from them.

Because of this, Leprosy was a socially isolating disease as you were cut off from the community and worshipping in the Temple, and cut off from family and friends.

During that time, leprosy was seen as so severe that it was believed that only God could heal it.

In the Gospel, the leper believes that Jesus can heal him. The leper asking Jesus to heal him shows that he believed in who Jesus was and that Jesus could bring him healing.

When Jesus encounters the man, He looks at him with pity and heals him. He then tells the leper to “Go, show yourself to the priest.”

One of the roles of the priests in the OT was to examine the sores on people’s bodies to determine if they had leprosy or not. If they were healed from the disease, then the priest instructed them on what sacrifices to make so that they could be reinstated back into the community and the Temple for worship.

Jesus says this in order too follow Jewish laws of purification.

The spiritual meaning of Christ’s encounter with the leper is that sin is like leprosy of the soul. Sin causes us to be unclean. It causes spots and scabs to grow on our soul like on the leper’s skin. Leprosy caused the people to be cut off from the community and Temple worship while sin separates us from God and cuts us off from His grace and the Church community.

How does God restore us back to Himself and the community when we are in mortal sin? How does He heal us?

We experience the healing power of Jesus through the Sacraments.

Every time we come to the Sacraments we essentially say as the leper says to Jesus, “If you wish, you can make me clean” and Jesus says to us every time especially in confession, “I do will it. Be made clean.” And He cleanses our soul from the effects of sin.

It’s important that we note how Jesus reacts to the leper because it gives us insight into how Jesus reacts to us in our sinfulness.

Jesus is not repulsed by the leper and doesn’t try to avoid him. Instead, Jesus draws close to the leper, and allows the leper to draw close to Him. This is unlike how the community treated lepers because, again, lepers were considered unclean and they thought the disease was highly contagious, so people avoided them at all costs.

However, Jesus, instead of being repulsed by the leper, comes near to him. Jesus is not afraid of becoming unclean because He can’t become unclean. Instead, He makes the unclean clean.

Jesus also has pity on the man. He sees his great suffering. The physical suffering from the terrible disease. The suffering of isolation from the community, especially from his family and friends. Also, the suffering from not being able to worship God in the Temple. We are made for worship. We are made to give worship to God. When we can’t worship God it causes a certain suffering in our soul.

Jesus has pity on the man in his suffering, and then heals him. Jesus not only heals him, but He does it by touching the leper to heal him and make him clean. The thought of touching a leper was unheard of, but Jesus, who is the Christ, can’t be defiled, as He makes clean all that is unclean.

When comparing this to our own encounter with Jesus in our sin, Jesus is not scared off by our sin or the state of our soul. He doesn’t treat us as outcasts. He doesn’t try to avoid us. Instead, He draws close to us in the filth of our sin and allows us to draw close in Him. He does this because He desires to make us clean once again. He desires to bring us His healing.

Christ sees our great suffering that is caused by our sinfulness. The great pain and woundedness that this causes our heart and soul. Jesus doesn’t look at us ready to condemn us, but He has pity on us. He has pity on us in our sinful state, and desires to bring us His healing.

To bring about this healing today, Jesus uses His priests in a similar way as He used priests in the OT. People often wonder why we have to go to a priest for confession. They think, “Why can’t I just go straight to God?”

One theologian, Brant Pitre, mentions in his commentary on this Sunday’s readings how one of the Church Fathers said “it was necessary to go to a priest in the Old Testament to be declared clean of leprosy” and how this “was a kind of typology pointing forward to the New Testament. In which, if we have a mortal sin, a deadly sin, instead of a deadly disease, we can’t just declare ourselves clean, we need to go to an appointed priest in the sacrament of confession and receive that spiritual cleansing, that spiritual healing, and be declared forgiven by a priest of Jesus Christ.”**

So Christ uses His priests today similarly to the OT when they had to show themselves to the priest to be declared clean. We can’t just go to straight to God and declare ourselves clean. When we sin, Jesus tells us as He told the leper, “Go, show yourself to the priest.” We have to go to the priest in confession who declares us forgiven and healed from mortal sin, so we can be brought back into communion with God and the Church and receive from the table of the Lord in the Holy Eucharist.

So today, let us beg the Lord to heal us from our sin, the leprosy of our soul. Let us follow His command to show ourselves to the priest in the Sacraments, especially confession, so that we may be made clean, and be restored back to Himself and the Church community.

** Pitre, Brant. Catholic Productions. https://catholicproductions.com/blogs/mass-readings-explained-year-b/the-sixth-sunday-in-ordinary-time-year-b