In our gospel for today we hear of another healing of a leper by Jesus. The leper humbly, and with great faith, says to Jesus, "Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean." (Luke 5:12) Jesus reaches out, touches the leper, and heals him. Jesus heals many people throughout scripture and does each in its own unique way. Sometimes, like today, he touches the leper, and the leper is healed. In other places he would ask the person being healed, "Do you believe I can do this?" and then the person is healed based on that faith, without Jesus actually touching him. Then there's the blind person where Jesus spits into the mud, and places it on the eyes of the blind person, thus healing the person.
In the current time of the pandemic, I feel and believe that Jesus can heal our society from this plague of COVID-19. We just need to say, like the leper, "Lord, if you wish, you can heal us and our society from this disease." Further, in addition to COVID, we have this plague of hatred and mistrust towards people we may not agree with politically. Instead of a healthy dialogue of our difference, we have resorted to name calling and verbal abuse. This is not pleasing to the Lord. We are to show everyone, whether we agree with them or not, the love and respect that God expects us to have towards everyone. And further, there's the problem with the rising of crime in our cities. We are worried and fearful about simply going into the subway. This shouldn't be and needs to be addressed by those in authority to protect our citizens from crime.
In all these issues, we need to place our trust in the Lord to heal us of COVID, heal us of political divisiveness and heal us of the crime that we are so fearful of in our cities. One way to bring about this healing is to follow the teachings of love God and our neighbor that the Lord was always teaching. St. John illustrates this so well when he writes, "This is the commandment we have from him: Whoever loves God must also love his brother." (1 John 4:21)
Let us pray this day, and every day, "Lord, if you wish, you can heal our society from this pandemic, from this hatred towards one another, and from this crime that is afflicting our cities. We place all these concerns into your loving hands, with love and trust. Amen."
Amen. I agree 100%.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the divisiveness in our country we need to do a lot more empathetic listening to seek understanding of the concerns of all sides & respect everyone. As an example of peacemaking we can look to the example of St. Francis of Assisi as he acted as mediator between the people in the town of Gubbio and the wolf. When St. Francis of Assisi listening empathetically & respectfully to both sides, the wolf was merely hungry & the people were merely afraid. A workable & acceptable solution to all sides: the people agreed to feed the wolf, & the wolf became like a gentle pet who no longer hurt anyone or anything.