Thursday of Week 1 (Year II): reflection

THEME: NEVER GIVE UP ON YOURSELF BECAUSE GOD HASN’T GIVEN UP ON YOU.

Reading: Mark 1: 40–45

Due to the contagious nature of their disease, lepers during the time of Christ were cast out of the society to live and die where they will not come in contact with other people and infect them. They were ordered not to come to places where they can have contacts with other people for fear of spreading their disease. Lepers who wanted to enter the city were mandated to sound alarm to people as they walked on the streets. In our own time too, lepers are often quarantined in lepers’ colonies to save the society from the spread of such deadly disease.

Merely touching a leper is enough to contact leprosy. When viewed from this perspective, one would understand the risk Jesus took in today’s gospel by allowing a leper to approach him and, then, by touching him to heal him of leprosy. The rare gesture of Jesus towards the leper tells us of one thing. It tells us that our God does not abandon us whenever the world has abandoned us to rot and die; God does not give up on us

Dear friends, anytime the world rejects you and casts you out into the wild for fear that your antecedents would damage their reputation, their families, their future and their business, 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, there is someone who doesn’t feel your presence close to him will damage all he has labored for in life. His name is Jesus. Go to him today on your 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 God grant you a breakthrough this Thursday. Amen

Fr Isaac C. Chima