In today's readings, we hear very different responses to leprosy, a disease that was greatly feared in biblical times. From Leviticus, we first hear of a very strict, law driven response to leprosy, aiming to protect the community from becoming infected from those afflicted. Then, Jesus gives us a compassionate response that breaks through the barriers and prejudices of his society. I wonder what these readings tell us about the Good News of Jesus, about how we are called to live out our faith?
From Leviticus, we hear how the ancient Jews dealt with leprosy and other skin diseases that had no known cures. These diseases were considered serious, not because they were highly contagious, but because the afflicted were seen as spiritually unclean and thus unfit to participate in religious rituals. The priests would officially declare such a person unclean; he would be quarantined in order to protect the community. In a community-based society such as ancient Israel, such a separation was very severe. At the time of his greatest vulnerability, the leper would be deprived of community support. A leper’s only regular social contact would have been with other lepers.
In Jesus' interaction with the leper today, we get a much different response. Under Jewish law, the leper should have been warning Jesus not to approach him. Yet, he kneels down and addresses Jesus as if in an act of worship, begging him: “If you wish, you can make me clean.” By interacting with Jesus, the leper risks incurring a very harsh punishment. Yet, he sees a goodness and authority in Jesus that surpasses the law. Rather than being shocked by the leper’s boldness, Jesus is moved by the trust the leper shows him. Jesus' compassionate response is not sentimental; it rather brings hope to the hopeless, it nurtures those who wish to follow Christ in and helps to perfect the faith of those who confidently approach him. The shock of this encounter continues when Jesus reaches out and touches the leper. I wonder if this leper had ever been touched with love in such a way before, if another human being had ever embraced him?
We might ask ourselves as to why Jesus touched this leper in order to heal him, since Jewish law would have prohibited such an act. Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus performs miracles with simply a word. A wave of his hand would have done the trick, without Jesus having to touch the leper’s diseased skin. Yet, Jesus touches him. He makes a point to touch him. He goes beyond what is necessary to physically touch the leper, this outsider, in an act flowing out of God's abundant love.
Jesus' point of touching the leper reminds me of stories I heard about Eva Peron, the first lady of Argentina over 50 years ago. I heard these stories when I studied in Buenos Aires one summer. Coming from a humble family herself, Eva Peron as the first lady of Argentina would spend a great deal of time and energy in helping the poor. In frail health herself, she did not hesitate to hug and even kiss many of the poor whom she met. She knew not only how much this meant to them, but also how much this contact meant to her. One elderly man told me about his encounter with Evita when he was a young man, how she hugged him as she met him at a train station. He had written to her to ask her to provide him a suit in which to get married. A poor Argentine gaucho cowboy, this man had never had a nice set of clothing. Evita did indeed give this man this suit, which his family still kept sealed in a plastic bag in a closet many decades later, even after this man’s death. The family had tears in their eyes as they told me this story. As human beings, we know how important our physical human touch is in reaching out to others. Jesus as the incarnate Christ used this physical touch as an important part of his ministry.
A message for us to take away from today’s insightful readings is that when we discover Jesus at work through the Body of Christ present in our world today, we understand that there is no one who is outside the reach of God's mercy, that we are called the full realization of our human potential. In deed, the Body of Christ calls out to empower all of us, especially those on the margins of society. The Good News of the Gospel is that there is no outsider in the eyes of God, as we are all one in Christ. In the powerlessness of the cross, Jesus has taken on the “otherness” of the outsiders in all forms; he calls us to do the same.
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