A Lectio Divina Approach to the Sunday Liturgy
BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD (Series 4, n. 12)
6th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B – February 12, 2006
“He Touched Him”
BIBLE READINGS
Lv 13:1-2, 44-46 // I Cor 10:31-11:1 // Mk 1:40-45
N.B. This new series of BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD: A LECTIO DIVINA APPROACH TO THE SUNDAY LITURGY presents a biblico-liturgical study of the Old Testament reading of each Sunday Mass to serve as background for a better understanding of the Gospel proclaimed in the liturgy. For a biblico-liturgical study of the Gospel for each Sunday, please go to the PDDM Web Archives: WWW.PDDM.US.
I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS
This happened in my native land in the Philippines when I was a young Sister. From Antipolo, I was transferred to Cebu Province and enjoying every moment of my apostolic experience in that beautiful island. One day I went with alacrity to the downtown commercial area to run an errand for our Superior. While waiting for the sales clerk to finish my order, I sat peacefully on a bench in a corner of the hardware shop. I nearly jumped out of my skin when a leper came suddenly and waved his diseased hand imploringly before my face. My heart palpitated nervously. It was the first time I saw a leper. I opened my wallet and handed him some coins as alms. I was very careful not to touch him. When he went away, I tried to breathe more evenly. Later on, I opened my wallet again to see whether I had enough loose change for my return trip to the convent. And then it happened! A swarm of about ten lepers appeared from nowhere and were shoving their dreaded hands and faces before me. In pitiful chorus, they were begging for alms. I was so aghast by the awful sight of their malignancy and misery. Overwhelmed with fright and by their physical proximity, I nearly fainted. The clerks came to my rescue and drove them away. They explained that they came from a leper colony and traveled once a week to the city to beg.
The Old Testament reading (Lv 13:1-2, 44-46) and the Gospel of this Sunday (Mk 1:4-45) talk about lepers, the pitiful outcasts of the society. Their malady being highly contagious, they are sequestered and put in isolation. According to Leviticus legislation, those with contagious skin diseases and in a leprous state had to be cut off from the society since they were a threat to the physical welfare of others and to the religious welfare of the community as a whole. During the time of their uncleanness, the afflicted persons were sentenced to dwell apart from the community and ordered to alert the unsuspecting through customary signs indicative of their diseased state: torn garments, long flowing hair, covered beard, and the repeated cry of warning, “Unclean, unclean!”
Harold Buetow comments: “Lepers simply did not belong in society. They had no hope of receiving love, no hope of being accepted as persons, no hope of enjoying ordinary human companionship. All of this in God’s name … History is tragically full of terrible things done to people by those who do not know the compassion, empathy, and reaching out that Jesus showed in today’s Gospel … As for lepers, in the Middle Ages a leper would be forced to watch as a priest filled an empty grave to symbolize his or her death. Then the leper was handed a bell to wear in order to warn others of his presence. Right through the early years of this century, treatment of lepers was not so far removed from the medieval treatment. In the U.S., most lepers were forced into a special hospital in Carville, Louisiana, isolated by a bend in the Mississippi River. In the founding of this institution, the rules were inhuman. Patients were denied most civil and human rights … Patients who showed the early symptoms of the disease were quarantined for years, sometimes decades. Even if the symptoms disappeared – and it was possible that some people had been misdiagnosed – patients were detained for as long as seven years, to make sure. Patients who entered hospital gates left behind everything: friends, children, future, sometimes hope.”
Set against the background of the Leviticus legislation and the brutal treatment afforded to the unfortunate victims of leprosy, the compassionate act of Jesus to the leper in Mark’s Gospel acquires greater depth of meaning and nobility. Pope Paul VI shares a very beautiful reflection on Jesus’ healing encounter with lepers, who were derogatively called the living dead: “ In these meetings Jesus showed himself as the bearer of new life … The Mosaic laws excluded and condemned the leper, forbade anyone to approach him, speak to him, touch him. Jesus, on the contrary, proves to be, in the first place, sovereignly free with regard to the old law. He approaches, he speaks, he touches and even cures the leper; he heals him and restores his flesh to the freshness of a child’s. And a leper came to him, we read in Mark, beseeching him, and kneeling said to him “If you will, you can make me clean.” The same thing will happen for ten other lepers. “Lepers are cleansed!”: this is the sign of his Messiahship that Jesus gives to John the Baptist’s disciples who had come to question him. And Jesus entrusts his own mission to his disciples: “Preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand’ … Cleanse lepers.”
Indeed, Jesus did a most wonderful thing to an extremely detestable element of the society. He touched the leper in response to his heart-rending plea for healing. Jesus willed to extend his hand to the dreaded outcast and cleansed the leper. His touch freed the suffering man, not only from his physical sores, but also from the brutal anguish of social ostracism and undeserved religious alienation meted out to those in leprous condition.
The full significance of Jesus’ powerful gesture of touching the leper is “paschal” and is related to his passion and desolate experience on the cross. Pope Paul VI explains: “But the loving gesture of Christ, who approaches lepers comforting and curing them, has its full and mysterious expression in the passion. Tortured and disfigured by the sweat of blood, the flagellation, the crowning of thorns, the crucifixion, the rejection by the people he had helped, he identified himself with lepers, becomes the image and symbol of them, as the prophet Isaiah had foreseen, contemplating the mystery of the Servant of the Lord: He had no form or comeliness … He was despised and rejected by men … as one from whom men hide their faces … we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But it is just from the wounds in Jesus’ tortured body and from the power of his resurrection that life and hope gush for all men stricken by evil and infirmity. ”
II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART
A. How do we react to people physically and spiritually afflicted with leprosy? Do we recognize the leprous elements in our modern society who bear the detestable sores of isolation and rejection, e.g. the poor and destitute, the homeless, the unattractive, the AIDS victims, etc.?
B. Did we ever experience being in a leprous condition ourselves? How did we react to the rejection, disgust and alienation imposed upon us by people repelled by our detestable situation?
C. In our experience of physical and spiritual affliction and when we are ravaged with the “leprosy of sin”, do we turn to Jesus for healing? Do we pray that he may extend his hands to touch us with his healing power? Do we believe in faith that from the wounds in Jesus’ tortured body and from the power of his resurrection life and hope gush forth for the healing of those stricken with evil and infirmity?
III. PRAYING WITH THE WORD
(Adapted from Henri Nouwen’s Prayer “Lord, Bring Help Against the Darkness”)
Leader: Dear Lord, you revealed that God is the God of life, in whom no death can be found. I pray, touch our death-oriented world and call forth new life. Bring life, joy, and new vitality to those who are walking in the shadow of death, to those who are ill and dying, to those who are depressed and in despair, to those who are resentful and violent. Do not let your people be conquered by the dark forces of death, but let your life-giving power enter their bodies, hearts and minds, and let them recognize you as the Son of the Living God.
Assembly: Lord Jesus, if you will, you can make me clean.
Touch me; heal me.
Cleanse me from the “leprosy of sin”.
Free me from the sores of rejection and isolation.
You are the wounded healer and the bearer of new life
by your passion and death on the cross
and by the power of your resurrection.
You live forever and ever.
Amen.
IV. INTERIORIZATION OF THE WORD
The following is the bread of the living Word that will nourish us throughout the week. Please memorize it.
“Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, ‘I do will it. Be made clean.’” (Mk 1:41)
V. TOWARDS LIFE TRANSFORMATION
A. ACTION PLAN: Pray for the victims of Hansen’s disease all over the world and all care givers who work to alleviate their pain and suffering. Through moral, spiritual and material support, contribute to their healing and restoration. Pray for the leprous elements in our modern society and find ways of letting them experience the healing touch of Jesus.
B. ACTION PLAN: To celebrate the power of the healing touch of Jesus, who assumed our leprous condition on the cross, make an effort to spend an hour in Eucharistic Adoration. Visit the PDDM WEB site (www.pddm.us) for the EUCHARISTIC ADORATION THROUGH THE LITURGICAL YEAR (Vol. 2, n. 12): A Weekly Pastoral Tool.
Prepared by Sr. Mary Margaret Tapang PDDM
PIAE DISCIPULAE DIVINI MAGISTRI
SISTER DISCIPLES OF THE DIVINE MASTER
60 Sunset Ave., Staten Island, NY 10314
Tel. (718) 494-8597 // (718) 761-2323
Website: WWW.PDDM.US