What can we learn today from a leper who kneels before Jesus in the hope of being healed?

Gospel (Read Mk 1:40-45)

We know from our reading of St. Mark’s Gospel that as Jesus began His public ministry, He drew large crowds (see Mk 1:28, 33, 37).  Today, we meet a leper who had apparently seen or heard enough about Jesus to make him take a bold action.  Jewish law kept lepers away from the worshiping community, because the leprosy made them ritually unclean, unable to participate in the liturgical life of Israel.  This can be difficult for us, in our day, to understand.  In the Law of Moses, in order to teach the people about God’s holiness—a lesson they desperately needed in order to be His chosen people—they had to learn in simple, obvious ways that God is Life Itself, pure goodness, perfect justice.  Nothing associated with death (the result of man’s disobedience) could enter His presence.  That meant that blood, disease, or death (a corpse) made a man ritually unclean, keeping him away from worship.  Ritual defilement always called for ritual purification.  These exterior practices, given early in Israel’s history, were meant to teach the people the difference between holiness and impurity, between righteousness (life) and sin (death).  Ritual impurity, like a contagious disease, could be spread by contact from one person to another.  Thus, lepers were required to live apart from the liturgical communion of Jews, and they were never to have physical contact with anyone who was ritually clean.

Knowing this, we can better appreciate the courage of this leper in our reading.  What made him disregard the restrictions of Jewish law and drop down on his knees before Jesus?  Was it the reputation Jesus had already earned as One who taught with authority, cast out demons, and cured the sick?  The leper longed to be “clean.”  He wanted not just to be healed of a dreadful disease but also to be able to enter again the worship of God’s people.  He must have been convinced that Jesus could do this, and so he pressed forward.

Look at his request:  “If You wish, You can make me clean.”  This one statement is a window into the leper’s heart.  Even though his need was great, he makes a request, not a demand.  He longed to be clean, but he acknowledges that the prerogative lay entirely with Jesus.  It is an amazingly humble posture.  His terrible misfortune had not made him angry or bitter; it had not filled him with so much self-pity that he expected Jesus to make him clean.  Such is the heart of a true Israelite.

See the impact of the leper and his words on Jesus.  He was “moved with pity.”  Here is where we begin to understand the deepest meaning of this encounter.  The “unclean” leper stands for sinful man (us, in other words), whose disobedience (the disease of sin) prevents him from communion with the holy God.  The Law given to Moses identified and contained the sickness but was not able to heal it.  Jesus can.  The sinner has no “right” to this healing; he is utterly cast upon the mercy and grace of God.  On his knees, in a posture of adoration, the sinner, too, must say, “If You wish, You can make me clean.”  What happens when we do this?

Jesus “stretched out His hand, touched him, and said to him, ‘I do will it.  Be made clean.’”  Not only had the leper acted courageously in approaching Jesus, but our Lord did the unthinkable by stretching out His hand to touch the leper.  Here was something new in Israel!  The Law required holiness to be preserved by not coming into contact with impurity, because impurity was contagious.  Now, however, the holiness of Jesus reaches out and itself becomes contagious.  It conquers and heals the impurity.  Why?  Because God wills it.  We can almost hear the delight in Jesus’ words when He makes this clear.  This is exactly what He came to do.  As Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis has written, “Christ’s fingers, which had so joyfully created man out of the clay of the earth, now exult as they receive admission into poor human flesh in need of regeneration” (Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word, pg 324).

See the power of Jesus’ touch and words:  “the leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean.”  This episode is wonderfully iconic of what the Church teaches us about a sacrament.  Here, again, we are helped by Leiva-Merikakis:  “In Christ’s action of healing as the visible sign of God’s invisible grace and the leper’s invisible faith, we have the perfect form of a sacrament.  The physical gesture of Jesus’ hand touching the man’s body accompanied by the words, ‘I want it; be healed!’  God’s intervention in the human scene becomes word that is saving act; man is to be invaded by the divine flood of life at every level of his being at once.” (ibid., pg 326)

Jesus sends the leper to the priest to be re-admitted to the worshiping liturgical community (just as we are sent to our priests when our sin separate us from worship).  He also warns the man not to spread the news of what happened.  Why?  Jesus knew He needed time to complete His preaching mission to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  He did not want people to attempt to make him king prematurely, or for the wrong reason, nor did He want to arouse the suspicion of the authorities in Jerusalem.  The leper couldn’t contain himself (do we blame him?).  As a result, “people kept coming to [Jesus] from everywhere.”

What can we learn from the leper today?  Not a bad question to ask ourselves.

Possible response:  Lord Jesus, I learn from the leper that You are delighted, not disgusted, when I kneel before You to cure my sin.

First Reading (Read Lev 13:1-2, 44-46)

Here we see a portion of the Law concerning leprosy.  In reading it, we should be able to understand that the disease represents sin (why would it be a priest, not a doctor, who examines the leper?).  The Law separated a leper as “unclean” and required him to live “outside the camp.”  This phrase appears again in the description of Israel’s Day of Atonement.  After animals had been slain as an offering for sin outside the Tabernacle (the tent of worship before the Temple in Jerusalem was built), the carcasses were dragged “outside the camp” to be burned (see Lev 16:27; Heb 13:11).  In this we see again the removal of impurity away from the presence of God.  The writer of Hebrews reminds us that Jesus, Who from eternity willed us to “be clean,” was willing to become like a leper and suffer “outside the gate [the city] in order to sanctify [or make clean] the people through His own blood” (see Heb 13:12).

We always need to make the connection between physical disease as a representation of sin in Scripture.  Jesus healed physical infirmity as a sign that He came to heal us of sin, a disease that corrodes our souls the way leprosy corrodes skin.  The visible act of physical healing represented the invisible act of a cure for sin.  It is good to remember that the apostles, after the Ascension and Pentecost, did not set up public health programs.  They preached repentance and faith in the One willing to make His abode “outside the camp” in order to make us clean.

Possible response:  Lord Jesus, thank You for coming “outside the camp” to find and rescue me.

Psalm (Read Ps 32:1-2, 5, 11)

Here is a song of praise from one who has experienced healing from the disease of sin:  “Blessed is he whose fault is taken away, whose sin is covered.”  The psalmist describes doing with his sin what the leper did with his disease:  “I acknowledged my sin to You, my guilt I covered not.”  Just as a sick man must expose his illness to a doctor for a cure, a sinner must confess his faults to the LORD in order to be forgiven and thus healed.  Our responsorial gives us a refrain that describes what the leper did in his hour of need and what we do in ours:  “I turn to you, LORD, in time of trouble, and You fill me with the joy of salvation.”

Possible response:  The psalm is, itself, a response to our other readings.  Read it again prayerfully to make it your own.

Second Reading (Read 1 Cor 10:31-11:1)

St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians was filled with practical instruction about the many problems they experienced in their church.  One of their biggest challenges was disunity.  His advice was simple.  It began with “do everything for the glory of God.”  The alternative to that, of course, is to do everything for ourselves and our own purposes, and that leads to fractures in the Christian community.  Then he says, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” St. Paul means that the Corinthians should follow his example of “not seeking my own benefit but that of the many.” He thought of this as a summary of what Jesus did for us, to heal “the lepers” of our disease of sin: Jesus gave life for mine; now, I give my life for yours.

Are there “lepers” in our lives from whom we want to recoil and separate?  Do we still think we can?

Possible response:  Lord Jesus, help me remember St. Paul’s example to seek the benefit of others, especially the difficult people in my life, instead of my own.

"The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and with power find all manner of justification for their own privilege." —US President Barack Obama, May 17, 2009

"When the Church addresses her social teaching to issues of the common good… her aim, which is our aim as patriotic Catholics, is simply to help purify reason and to contribute, here and now, to the acknowledgment and attainment of what is just (Deus caritas est , no. 28)." —Archbishop Raymond Burke, May 8, 2009

"Understand — I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. No matter how much we may want to fudge it… the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature. Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words." —US President Barack Obama , May 17, 2009

"As Catholics, we can never cease to work for the correction of gravely unjust laws. Law is a fundamental expression of our culture and implicitly teaches citizens what is morally acceptable." —Archbishop Raymond Burke, May 8, 2009

Two different interpretations of justice, two different visions of law, and two different understandings of reason were on display for the nation and the world to see this past week in America.

One was presented by an American Catholic prelate from Wisconsin: Archbishop Raymond Burke , formerly bishop of La Crosse, Wisconsin, then of St. Louis, Missouri, and now Prefect of the Apostolic Signature in Rome, the highest judicial authority (the equivalent of a Supreme Court) of the Roman Catholic Church.

The other was presented by US President Barack Obama , formerly a community organizer, professor of law, and state representative from Illinois.

Burke’s remarks were made on May 8 in Washington D.C. before a crowd of about 2,000 people, mostly Catholics, at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.

Obama’s remarks were made on May 17 at the University of Notre Dame ("Our Lady" in French, in honor of the Virgin Mary), in front of tens of thousands.

The crux of the issue, the place where the visions of the two men conflict and cannot be reconciled, is simple to understand. It is the question of human life — the life of the unborn baby — and whether that human life has a claim to be protected by law.

Burke’s position is that all human life has a right to be protected.

In essence, Burke is a defender of the right of every human being to live, and not be murdered by others for no cause. In this sense, he is "pro-life."

For Burke, reason (natural law) teaches that all just human societies should provide a benevolent protection for human life through laws.

A society that does not do so, a society which allows a class or group of human beings to be killed without any legal sanction, introduces, in Burke’s view, a profound injustice into its legal system, with consequences that ripple out in unpredictable ways, undermining the respect for justice throughout the society.

Burke further believes that reason (natural law) teaches that it is the purpose of all law to strive for justice.

Thus, reason urges us — reason, not the Christian or any other religious faith — to make laws that protect innocent human life, and repeal laws that sanction injustice.

If we are to be true servants of reason (servants of the Logos at the origin of all things), Burke argues, then we must acknowledge that taking the life of an innocent human being is always and everywhere unjust, that is, evil, and can never be described as just, that is, good.

Obama presented a different vision.

He argued — or seemed to argue — that justice is something relative, that there are different views about what is just, and that the highest principle of human social order, therefore, is not to find justice itself, and protect it with just laws, but to honor and respect the moral judgments of others, even if those judgments are unjust.

In this vision, wrong has rights.

It has rights because the goal is to reconcile competing visions of an uncertain moral law, not to arrive at justice itself.

This is Obama’s principle of "common ground," where wrong and right are equally at home.

Here is the salient passage where Obama sets forth his viewpoint:

"When we open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do — that’s when we discover at least the possibility of common ground," Obama said. "That’s when we begin to say, ‘Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions. So let’s work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term. Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women.”

In these words, Obama does grant considerable space to the "pro-life" position — and for this, he was applauded by many, even in Rome.

Indeed, he is proposing, in this passage, just actions.

Still, in these words, Obama avoids granting any validity to the pro-life contention: that it is unjust to kill an innocent human being.

Is it, or is it not, just to kill a baby in his mother’s womb?

From the president, no answer.

Burke says it is not just.

For Burke, the highest principle is justice: if an action is unjust, it cannot be justified by any human law.

Obama seems to be saying, "maybe it is, maybe it isn’t."

For Obama, the highest principle seems to be social peace: if an action is unjust, it can still be permitted for the sake of the general peace of society.

Burke finds the measure of human action in a principle: justice; Obama, seemingly, in a different principle: utility, the useful.

And out of this difference, it would seem, two different types of human society inevitably unfold and develop, one based on justice, on what is good and right, the other on utility, on what is useful at the moment, without regard to transcendent considerations of the good or the just — our present society.

And the consequences are grave in all areas of human life, including family life, including the justice or injustice of the society’s financial system and the organization of its economy — areas where the upcoming social encyclical of the Pope will clarify how justice must also be the goal of economic systems and laws.

First Reactions

The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano , gave a rather superficial and unsatisfying report on Obama’s address this morning. (Burke’s talk a week earlier was almost universally ignored worldwide.)

The report focused on the positive: that Obama had indicated he would work to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, to facilitate adoption, and to support women who want to carry their babies to term. The Osservatore also duly noted that Obama had also spoken of drafting a "conscience clause" for medical personnel who are morally opposed to participating in abortions. (Is this a matter for rejoicing? That the government will agree not to force pro-life doctors, whether Catholics, Orthodox Jews, evangelical Protestants, or others of good will, to perform abortions they regard as abominable contraventions of their personal and professional principles? What kind of government would compel such participation?)

"The search for a common ground: This seems to be the path chosen by the president of the United States, Barack Obama, in facing the delicate question of abortion," the Osservatore said, adding that Obama had set aside the "strident tone" of the 2008 political campaign on the abortion issue.

The Osservatore acknowledged the controversy caused by the president’s appearance at what it called "the most prestigious Catholic university in the United States."

"Yesterday, too, as could have been predicted, there were protests. But from the podium set up in the basketball arena, the president invited Americans of every faith and ideological conviction to ‘work in common effort’ to reduce the number of abortions," the paper said.

Missing from this report is any discussion of the deeper issues involved, issues set forth by Burke in his May 8 address.

American Reactions

In America, the press coverage of Obama’s remarks was generally laudatory — sometimes fawningly so.

Perhaps the supreme example of this came in an opinion piece penned by E. J. Dionne, who covered Vatican affairs for the New York Times for several years in the 1980s, before becoming a leading political commentator in America.

Here is how Dionne opened his piece, published in the Washington Post [yesterday] morning: "Facing down protesters who didn’t want him at Notre Dame, President Obama fought back not with harsh words but with the most devastating weapons in his political arsenal: a call for ‘open hearts,’ ‘open minds,’ ‘fair-minded words’ and a search for ‘common ground.’"

Clearly, Dionne is presenting Obama as the voice of reason, and the pro-life protesters — who did not feel it fitting that a pro-abortion president should receive an honorary degree and speak at length at a university dedicated to Our Lady — as unreasonable.

And Dionne is correct when he sums up the "conventional wisdom" on the result of Obama’s speech: "By facing their arguments (the arguments of the pro-life protesters) head-on and by demonstrating his attentiveness to Catholic concerns, Obama strengthened moderate and liberal forces inside the Church itself. He also struck a forceful blow against those who would keep the nation mired in culture-war politics without end. Obama’s opponents on the Catholic right placed a large bet on his Notre Dame visit. And they lost."

Yes, that is the generally accepted wisdom: that Obama was reasonable, that the protesters were unreasonable; that the "culture wars" in America (over abortion, embryonic stem cell use, homosexual marriage, etc.) have been a muddy swamp in which the nation has been mired, but that Obama, with his "sweet reason" will guide the nation to higher ground ("common ground"); that Catholic pro-life activists are politically on "the right" as if a conviction about the injustice of killing unborn babies is a political and not a moral position.

The issue is not Obama’s calm demeanor, nor is it his laudable efforts to do things which, objectively speaking, are good or in the direction of the good ("make adoption more available"; "provide care and support for women who do carry their children to term").

The issue is basic, fundamental: does the infant in the womb have human rights, including the right not to be killed?

Obama, clearly, does not believe any child in the womb has this right.

The Larger Picture

The Catholic tradition, the Jewish tradition, the Muslim tradition, the entire ethical tradition of mankind, the natural law tradition, all unanimously have held that the unborn child should be protected, cherished, nourished, cared for, loved.

This is the common conviction of all mankind at all times, except, it would appear, our own.

This ethic is a true "seamless garment" — protect the unborn child (no intentional abortion), protect the newborn infant (no infanticide), protect the child (no abuse of children), protect the young (educate them and nourish them and confer on them all the hopes for a better future), protect the middle-aged (so that they can care for their parents and their children, by ensuring good work at decent pay), and protect the old — honor the old (no euthanasia).

This is an ethic of life.

And it is not right-wing or left-wing. It is radical, rooted in what all of us know to be true and just and right. And a society that goes against what all of us know to be true and just and right cannot thrive and flourish.

And the beginning of the ethic, the starting point of the seamless garment, is in the womb, that place of all places which ought to be sacred, and secure, and respected, and not doused with drugs, probed by pincers, cut open, poisoned, scraped, or otherwise disrupted and invaded.

This is true respect for the woman — true feminism.

This is true respect for the human person — true humanism.

And if it took the smooth but ultimately unjust — ultimately unreasonable — words of Obama at Our Lady’s university, Notre Dame, to make this crystal clear, then so be it.

The pro-life movement has not lost.

Sometime, generations hence, our descendants will look back in puzzlement and shame at what we have done, and justified, with specious arguments.

Obama could reflect more deeply, and become a true unifier — uniting with the wise and holy men of previous and coming generations, and not with the utilitarians of the present — if he would embrace the ethic of life.

As it is, Obama — like the University of Notre Dame itself — sounds an uncertain trumpet, and is destined, barring a change, to leave a legacy of injustice defended.

Reason and sanity and good sense and love of life will return once again, and human life will be embraced and cherished as a mysterious, priceless treasure, and the civilization which will spring from that cherishing will outshine our present one as the sun outshines the most distant stars.