Friday of 12th Week in Ordinary Time, Yr. II: reflection

Theme: Never give up on yourself because God is still interested in you.

Mt 8:1–4

Dear friends in Christ, no matter how horrible the circumstances you have found yourself in, never give up on yourself because there is someone who has not given up on you, someone who is still interested in your well-being and is willing to make you whole; that person is Jesus.

Leprosy is a disease that can drive a person to give up on himself and just wait for the day death will complete the process. During the time of Christ, lepers were mandated to live and die outside the cities so that they will not come in contact with other people and infect them due to the contagious nature of leprosy. If a leper wanted to enter the city for any reason, he was required to ring a bell while walking down the street and shouting ‘unholy, unholy,’ so that others would make way for him. Any leper who failed to follow the rules governing his situation risked being stoned. A person who is this way excluded from societal life may be referred to as a living dead.

In our own time too, lepers are also quarantined in lepers’ colonies to protect the society from the spread of such a deadly disease.

Dear friends, everyone dreads touching a leper because a single touch is enough to contact leprosy.

When viewed from these perspectives, one would understand the risk Jesus took in today’s gospel by allowing a leper to approach Him and, then, by touching the leper to heal him of leprosy, as well as the risk the leper took by approaching Jesus.

One might wonder why Jesus chose to touch the leper rather than heal him from a distance, as He did on many occasions. Jesus’ rare gesture of touching the leper tells us that our God does not abandon us whenever the world abandons us to rot and die; God never gives up on us.

Therefore, dear friends, whenever you feel rejected, abandoned, cast out by the world or anytime the world around you has actually pushed you away for fear that you will dent their reputation or for any reason whatsoever, don’t reject yourself because there is someone who is still interested in you; there is someone who has not rejected you; there is someone who is not ashamed to be seen with you and who is willing to touch you and make you whole again. His name is Jesus. Hence, approach him today on bended knees as the leper of today’s gospel did. You won’t believe how he will embrace you, clean up your mess (if any), restore you, and reposition you for a better future.

May Christ make you whole again. Amen

Fr Isaac Chima