DOCTRINAL MESSAGE Leprosy,
with its repugnant and frightful effects – a rotting of
the whole person, as it were, and the consequent social
ostracism and alienation even from the closest and most beloved
beings - is a parable of sin. Indeed, "rabbinic rules
explained that the illness was caused by severe transgression of
the law and forbade any sort of approach to a
victim of the illness. If a leper approached other people
he was to be stoned" (Von Balthasar).
Everything is changed
with Christ. When the leper approaches, instead of stoning him
he reaches out his hand, touches him, and declares him
cured. Jesus is the New Man, in whom the power
and merciful compassion of God abide, and who, in reaching
out and touching the man afflicted with this awful and
contagious condition - and sin is far more awful and
contagious than leprosy - takes it upon himself in order
to free us of it. For us he became a
moral leper: "He was spurned and avoided by men, a
man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, One of those from
whom men hide their faces, spurned, and we held him
in no esteem. Yet it was our infirmities that he
bore, our sufferings that he endured" (Isaiah 53:3-5).
Although "the leprosy
left him then and there", this Jesus who was "moved
with pity" still required of the man that he fulfill
the ritual prescriptions of the law: "go and present yourself
to the priest" – as the Church still requires of
Christians in his name even if, possessing perfect sorrow (something
we cannot trust ourselves to have), a person should already
be in fact free from sin. Certainly, Jesus´ charge to
the man is related to the old law; but the
apostles clearly did not see it as foreign to the
power to forgive sins they were invested with by the
risen Christ (John 20:22-23). The sacramental economy, and
its fundamental conditions, are not the Church´s invention: the sacraments
would be quite useless were it so, for "only God
can forgive sins". It is precisely because the Church has
preserved intact the sacred trust of the sacraments given to
her by Christ that they continue to be efficacious. To
dispense with them would be quite the opposite of the
compassion the Church must learn, not from the shortsightedness of
the world, but from Christ.
Catechesis. There is a good
foundation for a catechesis on the sacrament of penance and
reconciliation, but that is perhaps better left to next week
(see Eighth Sunday). One might instead take the opportunity to
explain how the sacraments come from Christ and continue his
work (CCC 1114-1121); or else focus on the
basic kerygmatic proclamation that salvation is to be found only
in Christ: "there is no other name under heaven given
among men by which we must be saved" (CCC 1
and 430-435).
PASTORAL APPLICATIONS
Personalizing the sacraments: Jesus continues to reach out and heal
his people today first and foremost through the sacraments. It
is especially important in our time that we all to
recognize Jesus´ personal touch in the seven forms that disguise
his action to merely human eyes. An enlightened faith must
lead us to experience it as a contact as vital
and transforming as his encounter with the leper or with
the woman who had a hemorrhage (Luke 8:43-48). Would our
approach to Communion, or to the sacrament of Reconciliation, not
be very different if we thought of it above all
as a very personal encounter with the One who loves
us more than any other?
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