A COMPASSIONATE HEART   

June 25, Friday

TWELFTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

 

God renews his promises to Abraham.

Immediately after the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew gives us a series of miracles of Jesus, the first of which is narrated in today’s Gospel, the cure of the leper. Jesus had spoken with power, now he acts with power; Jesus had spoken of the law of love, now he himself puts it into practice in an act of compassionate help to an outcast. Note that in the Bible, leprosy is closely linked to sin and like a physical sign of sin. Let us honor our Lord in his compassion and forgiveness.

 

First Reading: Genesis 17:1-14

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, God showed up and said to him, “I am The Strong God, live entirely before me, live to the hilt! I’ll make a covenant between us and I’ll give you a huge family.”

Overwhelmed, Abram fell flat on his face.

Then God said to him, “This is my covenant with you: You’ll be the father of many nations. Your name will no longer be Abram, but Abraham, meaning that ‘I’m making you the father of many nations.’ I’ll make you a father of fathers—I’ll make nations from you, kings will issue from you. I’m establishing my covenant between me and you, a covenant that includes your descendants, a covenant that goes on and on and on, a covenant that commits me to be your God and the God of your descendants. And I’m giving you and your descendants this land where you’re now just camping, this whole country of Canaan, to own forever. And I’ll be their God.”

God continued to Abraham, “And you: You will honour my covenant, you and your descendants, generation after generation. This is the covenant that you are to honour, the covenant that pulls in all your descendants: Circumcise every male. Circumcise by cutting off the foreskin of the penis; it will be the sign of the covenant between us. Every male baby will be circumcised when he is eight days old, generation after generation—this includes house-born slaves and slaves bought from outsiders who are not blood kin. Make sure you circumcise both your own children and anyone brought in from the outside. That way my covenant will be cut into your body, a permanent mark of my permanent covenant. An uncircumcised male, one who has not had the foreskin of his penis cut off, will be cut off from his people—he has broken my covenant.”

 

Gospel: Matthew 8:1-4

He Carried Our Diseases

Jesus came down the mountain with the cheers of the crowd still ringing in his ears. Then a leper appeared and went to his knees before Jesus, praying, “Master, if you want to, you can heal my body.”

Jesus reached out and touched him, saying, “I want to. Be clean.” Then and there, all signs of the leprosy were gone. Jesus said, “Don’t talk about this all over town. Just quietly present your healed body to the priest, along with the appropriate expressions of thanks to God. Your cleansed and grateful life, not your words, will bear witness to what I have done.”

 

Prayer

Lord God, our Father,
your Son, Jesus Christ, revealed to us
your compassionate, healing love.
Let his presence here in our midst
fill us with his power of sharing
in the miseries of our neighbor.
Let our words be like balm
on open wounds in their hearts
and let our deeds bring healing
to all those around us.
We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

 

Reflection:

Christian Closeness
Leprosy was a life sentence. And healing a leper was as difficult as bringing a dead man back to life: this is why they were marginalized. They could not mix with the people. When Jesus came down from the mountain, a great crowd followed him. However, “there were other people who didn’t follow him: they watched him from afar. There were people who couldn’t mingle with the crowd: the law forbade it because they were ‘unclean’.

This leper felt in his heart a longing to draw close to Jesus. He had faith in Jesus, took courage and drew near. It was a difficult decision for Jesus too. There were the religious leaders and the detractors of Jesus who were always watching with an intention to put Jesus to the test. Touching a leper was a good enough reason for them to condemn Jesus. But, Jesus didn’t stand still, without touching him. Instead he drew even closer, stretched out his hand and healed him.

Today, many people watch him from afar but are not interested in the person of Jesus; many watch from afar to to criticize him, to condemn him. And many people watch from afar because they don’t have the courage of that leper. But Jesus stretches out his hand to everyone – becoming one like us; soiled by our sins. And this is Christian closeness.

Pope Francis, had given a beautiful reflection on this Gospel passage in 2015. He said, “Closeness is such an important word: you can’t build a community without closeness; you can’t make peace without closeness; you can’t do good without drawing near. Jesus could have said to him: “Be healed!”. But instead He drew close and touched him. What’s more: at the moment that Jesus touched the unclean man, Jesus became unclean. And this is the mystery of Jesus: He takes upon himself our uncleanliness, our impurities”.

St Paul describes this well when he writes that Jesus, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself”. Jesus became sin, Jesus became excluded, took impurity upon himself to draw close to man. There is no ‘set protocol’ for God’s action in our life… When the Lord intervenes into our lives, we cannot expect to have any pattern! it does not exist. But what is certain is, that God intervenes.

The pope in his reflection invited every faithful and the Church as a whole “to get close to marginalized people, close the distance until touching them without being afraid to get dirty. This is the “Christian closeness” that Jesus showed us concretely when he freed the leper from the impurity of the disease and also from social exclusion.

 

Video available on Youtube: Christian Closeness