This Sunday and last Sunday, we have heard
a couple of stories of Jesus' miracles of healing in the Gospels. Last
week, if you recall, Jesus healed Simon Peter's mother-in-law, who was sick in
bed with a fever, and who waited on Jesus and his friends the moment she was
restored to health. Then, today, we have the leper was knows that Jesus
has the power to heal him, and he asks Jesus to be made whole and to be
healed. We hear a lot about healing
these last weeks in ordinary time before we enter the holy season of Lent this
Wednesday.
So much in the Gospels tell us about those
who need to be healed coming to Jesus for help- the blind, the lame, the deaf
the sick, the paralyzed, the leper, the mute, and the ones possessed by unclean
spirits. We need healing on different levels in our lives, don't we, no
matter who we are? As you know, I just back from pilgrimage. As I just got back
from the pilgrimage late last night, the sights and sounds and experiences I
had are still very vivid in my mind. In
the Middle Ages, many of the faithful would be given the obligation to go on
pilgrimage as their penance for their sins after they went to a priest for the
sacrament of reconciliation. And indeed,
going on a pilgrimage was an arduous journey.
When I was at the Sunday mass last weekend just a couple of days
before arriving in Santiago de Compostela in the town of Arzua, the priest, at
the end of mass, announced that he thought he saw some pilgrims in
attendance. He said that
the road to Santiago is always an difficult and challenging journey, but he
noted that to come in the winter in the midst of the cold and the snow, well
these pilgrims must have some really serious sins to amend for in their
lives. On one stage of the hike in the middle of some rough mountainous
terrain, I passed a pilgrims' water fountain called la Fuente de Mojapan - the
fountain of moistened bread - such a curious name! The pilgrims would bring hard scraps
of bread for food, tucked into their capes. They would stop off at this fountain
to moisten the hard bread in order to eat it. What interesting was that this
fountain had a sign with a red X marked over it, showing that the water was
untreated and that modern pilgrims should not drink it. In those mountains on that part of the
pilgrimage, bandits would hide and would attack and rob the pilgrims. Many of the pilgrims would travel at
night so as not to be so open and obvious targets. It was tough traveling through those
mountains during the day - I cannot imagine at night when the markers and the
trail are so difficult to see. I
kept on seeing these paw prints on the trail as I hiked along in those
mountains. I knew that they would not be
from a house cat or a dog, since there were no villages or towns close by. I imagined some big cat such as a panther or
lynx pouncing out at me at any time.
Whether it be the modern pilgrims or the pilgrims from centuries ago, so
many have gone on this pilgrimage in order to find healing and wholeness in
their lives, to experience God in a very real and special way.
Jesus healed people in the Gospel to give
us all a sign of God's kingdom – to proclaim the way the Kingdom of God is
present here on earth and to proclaim the way he will present for us in the
eternal life to come. Jesus also give
us a model of service in the Gospel today, especially in the way he reached out
to the leper in his reality, in his need, in his brokenness - in the way Jesus
restored the leper to wholeness. On the Camino, I met what we call “Camino
Angels”, those who went out of their way to help me on my journey, and I can
give you many many examples. There was a hospitalero at the hostel in the
large city in Burgos named Luis, and I saw him as one of these Angels. I had to take the bus from city of Burgos to city of Astorga in
order to make up time on the Camino since I only had three weeks to walk
it. The problem was – there was only
one bus a day – and it left at 4:30 in the morning. The trouble was, the hostel’s doors were
closed during the night and were not opened until 7:00 am the next
morning. I asked Luis if there was a way
I could get out. He not only woke up
early that next morning to let me out, but he escorted me all the way to the
bus station, and did so walking over the cobblestone streets of the city, which
were covered with a sheet of ice. He
represented for me the joy of the pilgrimage and the spirit of St James that
was present.
As you know, performing acts of charity
during Lent are part of our Lenten disciplines.
It would be good to choose a service or act of charity that we could do
during Lent as part of our Lenten disciplines and practices. Our homework this week is to think about the
promises we want to make during Lent and to fill out our Lenten promise card
that we are going to bring to mass on Ash Wednesday. We need to take this to God in prayer,
to hear how he is calling out to us in the reality of our lives.
There is so much we can get out of this
one short Gospel passage. That is the
beauty of the Gospel. Let us see how the
story of the healing of the leper is calling out to us today.
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