Coffee With God

 

Reflection: Luke 17: 11-19

In the time of Jesus, four categories of people were treated as dead: the poor, the leper, the blind, and the childless. The lepers could not approach the public, as they were considered impure, like the cemeteries. All diseases were considered a punishment for sins but leprosy was the symbol of sin itself. The Jews believed that God used it to strike persons who were envious, arrogant, thieves, responsible for murders, making false oaths, and incestuous. The healing of leprosy was a miracle equal to the resurrection of a dead person. The lepers felt rejected by all: by people and by God. The gospel presents to us the story of 10 lepers. Nine of them are Jews and one, a Samaritan. Leprosy has put together Jews and Samaritans, united persons who, while in good health, despise, hate, and fight each other. The awareness of common disgrace and suffering gathered them in friendship and solidarity! And this is exactly what happens in the spiritual field: if I consider myself just and perfect, inevitably I raise the barriers and fences for self-protection from “lepers.” When I realise that I myself am a leper, I will not feel superior, will not judge, not distance myself, but I will be in solidarity in good and in bad with the brothers and sisters The ten lepers do not consider themselves as individuals. Instead, they move together in search of Jesus. Their common prayer is: “Jesus, Teacher, you who understand our condition, have mercy on us.” God’s mercy and salvation can be obtained only in communion with one’s brothers and sisters. There is nothing called “salvation of one’s own soul.” In paradise, no one, not even God, will be happy until the last human being is liberated from “leprosy” which puts them far away from the Lord and from the brothers/sisters. The number ten in the Bible has a symbolic value: it indicates the totality (the hands have ten fingers). The lepers of the Gospel represent therefore all the people, the entire humanity far away from God. All of us—Luke wants to tell us—are lepers and we need to encounter Jesus. No one is pure; we all carry on our skins signs of death that only the word of Christ can cure. God has not created two worlds: one for the good ones and the other for the wicked ones but a unique world wherein he calls all his children to live together, all sinners are saved by his love.