The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today challenge us to seek the truth in our reality that points to our need for healing and our mission to bring care and healing to others in the name of Christ.
Restored to heal and care
The reading from the First Letter of John identifies three kinds of testimony concerning the Son of God.
* [5:6–12] Water and blood (1 Jn 5:6) refers to Christ’s baptism (Mt 3:16–17) and to the shedding of his blood on the cross (Jn 19:34). The Spirit was present at the baptism (Mt 3:16; Mk 1:10; Lk 3:22; Jn 1:32, 34). The testimony to Christ as the Son of God is confirmed by divine witness (1 Jn 5:7–9), greater by far than the two legally required human witnesses (Dt 17:6). To deny this is to deny God’s truth; cf. Jn 8:17–18. The gist of the divine witness or testimony is that eternal life (1 Jn 5:11–12) is given in Christ and nowhere else. To possess the Son is not acceptance of a doctrine but of a person who lives now and provides life.1
Psalm 147 offers praise for God’s care for Jerusalem.
* [Psalm 147] The hymn is divided into three sections by the calls to praise in Ps 147:1, 7, 12. The first section praises the powerful creator who restores exiled Judah (Ps 147:1–6); the second section, the creator who provides food to animals and human beings; the third and climactic section exhorts the holy city to recognize it has been re-created and made the place of disclosure for God’s word, a word as life-giving as water.2
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus cleanses a leper.
* [5:14] Show yourself to the priest…what Moses prescribed: this is a reference to Lv 14:2–9 that gives detailed instructions for the purification of one who had been a victim of leprosy and thereby excluded from contact with others (see Lv 13:45–46, 49; Nm 5:2–3). That will be proof for them: see note on Mt 8:4.3
Andy Alexander, S.J. shares when we watch this story, it is hard not to simply fall in love with Jesus. Who does this, except someone who loves deeply? Jesus, completely unconcerned for his own safety, or worried about ritual impurity, just reaches out to the man in deep empathy and compassion. Our heart melts as we witness the scene.
The great news is that Jesus looks on us in our need in the same way. He knows how we feel about ourselves. He sees through the ways we present ourselves on the outside. He sees whatever pain we have and he reaches out to us. This story lets us boldly imagine approaching Jesus today and saying, in our own words, with our own pain, "Lord, if you want to, I believe you can make me clean. I believe you can relieve this thing in me that is self-defeating, this thing I "caught" somehow and it has a hold on me and isolates me from others." And, we can prepare ourselves to hear his most gracious and merciful response, "Of course, I want to. Be clean. Be healed. Be set free. Be whole again."4
Don Schwager quotes “Jesus' healing demonstrates the power of the kingdom of heaven,” by Ambrose of Milan, 339-397 A.D.
"The authority of power in the Lord is here compared with the steadfastness of faith manifest in the leper (Luke 5:12-13). He fell on his face because it is a mark of humility and modesty that each feel shame for the sins of his life, but shyness did not restrict his confession. He showed the wound, he begged for the remedy, and the very confession is full of piety and faith. 'If you will,' it says, 'you can make me clean'" He conceded the power to the Lord's will. But he doubted concerning the Lord's will, not as if unbelieving in piety, but as if aware of his own impurity, he did not presume. The Lord replies to him with a certain holiness. 'I will: be clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him.' For there is nothing between God's command and his work, because the work is in the command. Thus he spoke, and they came into being (Psalm 33:9). You see that it cannot be doubted that the will of God is power. If, therefore, his will is power, those who affirm that the Trinity is of One will affirm that it is of one power. Thus the leprosy departed immediately. In order that you may understand the effect of healing, he added truth to the work." (excerpt from EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF LUKE 5.2-3)5
The Word Among Us Meditation on Luke 5:12-16 comments that sin produces outward “sores” like angry outbursts or broken relationships as well as inward ones: guilt, shame, fear, and a kind of paralysis that keeps us from turning to the Lord for forgiveness and healing. If leprosy is a wasting disease of the body, sin is like a wasting disease of the spirit.
“Lord, if you wish . . . ” (Luke 5:12). Jesus was emphatic. He absolutely, without question, willed that this man be made clean of the disease that filled him. And he always, absolutely and without question, wills healing and cleansing of sin for us. It’s why he died on the cross! Every time we come to him and confess our sins, Jesus says, “I do will it. Be made clean” (Luke 5:13). He wants us to be made pure and untainted by habits of sin and the paralysis and isolation sin generates.6
Friar Jude Winkler connects the blood and water of the Letter of John to the spiritual and human nature of Jesus that was rejected by Docetism in the community. Water and blood are symbols in the Sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist. Friar Jude reminds us of the need for us to draw back, take stock, and recharge in our ministries.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, comments that when things are “unveiled,” we stop taking things for granted. That’s what major events like the COVID-19 pandemic do for us. They reframe reality in a radical way and offer us an invitation to greater depth and breadth. If we trust the universal pattern, the wisdom of all times and all places, including the creation and evolution of the cosmos itself, we know that an ending is also the place for a new beginning. Death is followed by a new kind of life.
I invite you to continue practicing some form of contemplative prayer this year. Our problems begin when we fight reality, push it away, or insist that the way I “see” reality, from my own limited perspective, is the only valid reality. Any contemplative practice that serves to welcome life as it is will change us. We will dive into this “unveiled”—and even unpleasant—reality positively and preemptively, saying, “Come God, and teach me your good lessons.” We need such a practice to lessen our resistance to change and our tight grasp around things. Let us seek to pray this way for as long as it takes us to arrive at a full “Yes” to Reality. Only then can its lessons come through to us.7
Our journey as followers of Christ calls us to action for life in the real world as our faith is strengthened in our contact with the Spirit.
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