Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
First Reading: Lv 13:1-2, 45-46
Second Reading: 1 Cor 10:23 - 11:1
Gospel Reading: Mk 1:40-45
“The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron,” we hear in this Sunday’s First Reading, ordering that people with “the leprous disease” should cover their upper lips and live alone outside the camp.
That was about 1,400 years before Christ. Leprosy, known from the 16th century BC, is thought to have spread to the western world from Egypt, starting with the Exodus. Not until the end of the 17th century AD did it become rare, thanks to strict legislation.
For example, Pope Gregory II wrote to St. Boniface in 726 AD, “Lepers who belong to the Christian faith should be allowed to partake of the Body and Blood of the Lord, but they may not attend sacred functions with people in good health.”
The Third Lateran Council, under Pope Alexander III in 1179 AD, decreed, “in accordance with apostolic charity” that “lepers, who cannot dwell with the healthy or come to church with others” should be allowed, where they were numerous enough, “to have their own churches and cemeteries” and “to be helped by the ministry of their own priests.”
Some medieval churches had small windows through which lepers could view the altar from outside. Called “lepers’ squints” in England, they can be found today in some 49 churches throughout the country.
In the 13th-century “Mass of Separation,” offered for a newly identified leper, the priest said, in part, “I forbid you to enter any narrow passage, lest a passerby bump into you.”
Our legislation to halt the spread of COVID-19, therefore, can hardly be called “unprecedented.” However, COVID can connect us in an “unprecedented” way to a great many of our brothers and sisters in Christ’s Mystical Body, and, with them, to Christ.
Pope St. John Paul II, during his 1984 trip to southeast Asia (just months before he came to Canada), visited the leprosarium on Sorok Do Island in Korea. What he said there is relevant to us today.
“It is a joy for me to know that among yourselves – Protestants, Catholics, and Buddhists – you all live together in genuine brotherhood,” he said. “Perhaps this is because you have tasted suffering so deeply.”
“Jesus was particularly close to all who suffered,” the Pope said. “He loved the sick. And there were many lepers among the people of his time.”
Jesus healed a leper – as we hear in this Sunday’s Gospel Reading – right after proclaiming a very counter-cultural message, the Pope noted: he identified as “beatitudes” what people normally call “curses.”
“The Gospel of suffering is necessary,” the Pope said. “It is through our sufferings that we complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his Body; that is, the Church.”
“To the unspeakable anguish of the question why me, Jesus offers the living answer of his own death on the cross, for he suffered entirely for others, giving himself in unending love.” His suffering “is truly the source of the dignity of all suffering, as well as the pledge of the future glory that is to be revealed in us.”
Referring to the sacrament of the sick, he said, “May the Lord raise you up with his grace, so that your souls may be ready for the glory of eternal life, and that your bodies, weakened by illness, may find comfort and strength in this hope through which your souls live!”
He finished by thanking all the caregivers. “Yours is a most noble, selfless service,” he said. “And yet, I am sure that you are the ones who receive the most, even though you give so generously. For in the paradox of love, it is the weak who sustain the strong, and the sick who heal the healthy.”
“May all leprosy patients – all the forgotten and neglected sick of this land and of the world – rejoice and be consoled in the knowledge of being especially loved by Jesus,” he concluded.
Father Hawkswell is again teaching “The Catholic Faith in Plain English.” All the materials (video and print) are available online free of charge at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Session 22, “Divisions Among Christians,” will be available Feb. 14.