Today’s Gospel gives us insight into who Jesus is, the importance for us to maintain faith’ and our mission to announce that faith.
In the times of Jesus leprosy was a terrible disease. It brought a physical, spiritual, and social death. The people sick with leprosy could no longer live with their family and neighbors. Separated from family and friends, they could no longer work and take care of themselves. They were reduced to begging for alms. Sickness in the Old Testament was seen as a punishment from God for sins – sins of the sick person and also sins of some ancestors. So, the sick person could be paying a sin debt from his or her great-grand parents. Sickness in general and specifically leprosy was a life with no hope, no future, a form of living death.
Yet we see one leper who with hope and faith approaches Jesus to ask for healing. Jesus is the sign of God’s compassion and will to be part of our lives and cure us of our infirmities. Jesus restores the fullness of life where there had only been death and despair.
Then Jesus sends the man off to the priests with the injunction that he tells no one else about his cleansing. Lepers who experienced a cure were supposed to present themselves to the priests in the temple for a sort of medical inspection to show their cure and get a sort of certificate of health so that they could return to their family and friends. They were also supposed to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving in the temple in Jerusalem for their cure. All that was sort of a private ritual between the cured leper and the priests in the temple.
Yet the cured man is so overwhelmed with joy that he shares his faith story and cure with everyone he meets along the way. He becomes a pilgrim of hope, a public witness of faith.
Here we see what many of us forget in our faith life. So many people have a good strong faith relationship with God. They feel and see the action of God in their lives daily. Yet how often do we remain silent. Our faith is reduced to that private thanksgiving ritual in the temple in Jerusalem. During this Jubilee Year, Pope Francis is inviting us to be public pilgrims of hope – to share our stories of faith and hope with our families and all those around us. Our mission as a Church is to announce the Good News.
The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter.
He spread the report abroad.
Image: https://salvationbiblecell.com/jesus-cleanses-a-leper/