
Be made clean!
A leper came to him and kneeling down begged him and said,
“If you wish, you can make me clean.”
Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand,
touched the leper, and said to him,
“I do will it. Be made clean.”
The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean.
Covid provided our modern world with a quasi-understanding of what lepers experienced in ancient Israel., especially in those first fear-filled months. But unlike Covid, leprosy was a known entity in the ancient world. The horrors of the untreatable disease were visible: supparating sores, deformed digits and facial features advertised its presence. Can we imagine the shocked horror at Jesus’ touching the leper? Or the amazement at hearing, “I do will it. Be made clean.?”
Similarly, because the tales of Jesus’ healing miracles have spread througout the land, four men “break through the roof of the house” where Jesus is teaching. This was the only way the intrepid friends could get the paralytic close to Jesus.
When Jesus saw their faith, he said to him,
“Child, your sins are forgiven.”
During Jesus’ teaching at the Capernaum synogogue, the people were amazed at his words, wondering who was this Jesus? The demons don’t wonder, they know.
“In their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit; he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are–the Holy One of God.”
It’s the first week of
ordinary time. Altough the word ordinary conveys the commonplace and routine, that’s not the meaning of the church’s ordinary time. It’s root is the Latin word, ordinalis: numbered or ruled…a seasonal rhythm of order. The vestments used by the priests and on the altar during ordinary time are green because the color signifies growth. In this case, our growth: in the daily routines of living our lives, caring for the creatures and the creation we’ve been given to conserve and protect.
Just so, last Sunday, Fr. Chris Munoz , celebrating the Baptism of Our Lord, invited each one of us to follow Jesus as we began this first week of ‘ordinary time.’ It’s been a liturgical week packed with healing, blatant displays of human desperation, exorcism and the call to follow Jesus.
What does that mean, to follow Christ?
These three simple words can grow in heft until they flatten me. True for many reasons but primarily because I’ve finished my third and most thorough read of Diedrich Bonhoefer’s The Cost of Discipleship, Although Bonhoefer is addressing his fellow German Lutherans, we 21st-century-Christian are pierced and exposed by the densely packed truths in these 297 pages. After my second read, I wrote of Bonhoefer’s explanation for faithlessness: disobedience. “The response of the disciples is an act of obedience, not a confession of faith in Jesus.” Without obedience, faith is a sham.
The path of discipleship is narrow, and it is fatally easy to miss one’s way and stray from the path, even after years of discipleship. And it is hard to find. On either side of the narrow path deep chasms yawn. To be called to a life of extraordinary quality, to live up to it, and yet to be unconscious of it is indeed a narrow way. To confess and testify to the truth as it is in Jesus, and at the same time to love the enemies of that truth, his enemies and ours, and to love them with the infinite love of Jesus Christ, is indeed a narrow way.
To believe the promise of Jesus that his followers shall possess the earth, and at the same time to face our enemies unarmed and defenceless, preferring to incur injustice rather than to do wrong ourselves, is indeed a narrow way. To see the weakness and wrong in others, and at the same time refrain from judging them; to deliver the gospel message without casting pearls before swine, is indeed a narrow way.
The way is unutterably hard, and at every moment we are in danger of straying from it…
The profound paradox of faith
This brilliant, founder of the Confessing Church, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, actively participated in the plot kill Hitler. It’s a decision that seems to contradict the entire message of his message of discipleship. And there is the rub, isn’t it? We cannot know what impels another. Inevitably, when we try to do so, we sin. Regardless of the evil another man or woman says or does, we must think, look and speak of them with love. No one is excluded.
Unutterably hard, indeed. This week has been one where my inability to do this led to seek confession twice within five days. “If you wish, you can make me clean…I do will it, be made clean!“
Saturday and Sunday’s Liturgical readings provide counsel and consolation:
- “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”
- “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin. So let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.”
- Sunday’s Gospel reading affirms Bonhoefer’s insistence on the fact that obedience must precede faith. It’s at the Cana wedding miracle that disciples gain faith. “Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him.”
- “Do whatever he tells you.”
The graces of My mercy are drawn by means of one vessel only, and that is — trust. The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive. Souls that trust boundlessly are a great comfort to Me, because I pour all the treasures of My graces into them (Diary, 1578).
Saint Faustina Diary
1 thought on “Be Made Clean!”
Obedience!! Ah. Impossible without grace. It’s a constant struggle. Thank you for sharing your personal struggle as well Lin. So thankful for the endless Mercy of God