Homily Notes | 2.12.2012 | English

SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, B

My brothers and sisters,

The disease of leprosy has pretty much been eradicated from contemporary society, but in Jesus’ day it was the most dreaded of all illnesses. It gravely disfigured its victims, forced them to live in the desert apart from family and friends, and rendered them unfit for public worship. How someone was evaluated to have the disease? One of the jobs of priests in the Old Testament was to act like a dermatologist and decide whether a person with a certain skin disease could be contagious. Whatever the disease was, if it was judged contagious it was called leprosy. The disease we hear about in today’s first reading appears to be something like ringworm. If it was decided a person had leprosy, the diseased person was suddenly homeless, without job or family. He or she had to live outside the city, could not associate with relatives or friends, they had to warn people when they were approaching, their home was tombs or caves and they made their living by begging from those traveling to or from the city or town. It would be a horrible sentence to have to condemn someone to. On the other hand, if the priest made the wrong and left the person stay around, he could jeopardize the health of the whole community. For two chapters the book of Leviticus lays out rules on how to deal with leprosy. Today’s first reading is a small section from this part of Leviticus. The rules were harsh, but in those primitive times they were necessary for the survival of the community. This reading is meant to prepare us for the gospel where we see that the power of Jesus and his love deals with sickness in a different way. He reaches out to the isolated and sick person and restores both their health and their ability to be reinstated in community. The episode in today’s Gospel is altogether extraordinary. Jesus not only welcomed the man; he actually reached out and touched him. He was not repulsed by this poor disfigured person. More than that, Jesus invoked an authority higher than that of the levitical law. Anyone who touched a leper was rendered levitically unclean, which meant that he was unfit for worship. Jesus implicitly rejected such legislation, and by his action he declared that charity is higher than any law.
Fr. Yves