Imitating Christ and the Saints in Loving Even Outcasts, Sixth Sunday (B), February 11, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
February 11, 2024
Lev 13:1-2.44-46, Ps 32, 1 Cor 10:31-11:1, Mk 1:40-45

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• In one short sentence at the end of today’s second reading, St. Paul gives us a summary of the Christian life: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” Each of us is called to imitate to Christ and to set the example, like St. Paul, so that others may emulate us. St. Paul is one in a line of saints whose actions were a living commentary on the modern expression, “What would Jesus do?,” and he urges us to imitate him in seeking to glorify God in everything we do.
• In today’s Gospel, we see what Jesus did and what we’re called, with St. Paul, to reproduce. One of the most physically disgusting and repulsive human beings imaginable came up to Jesus, knelt down and begged Jesus to cure him. Lepers, as you know, have a bacterial infection that eats away their flesh and bones and gives them a sickening odor. At the time of Jesus, leprosy was considered so contagious that those with it were quarantined for basically the rest of their life apart from the community. They had no one with whom to associate or to care for them — except other lepers. They were cut off from their family, from work, from the synagogue and temple, and basically from love and mercy. They were outcasts, ostracized from all things human. They had to wear ripped clothes and keep their hair messy so that others would be able to spot them easily from a distance. Whenever they needed to travel to obtain something, they were mandated by Mosaic law, as we see in today’s first reading, to shout out “Unclean!” “Unclean!,” as if their whole identified were summed up by that adjective. They were forbidden to come within a certain distance of others. Anyone who touched a leper became, in Jewish mentality, ritually unclean. That the man in today’s Gospel broke all convention to come close to Jesus was a sign of just how desperate he was.
• What was Jesus’ reaction to this miserable, nauseating creature on his knees before him? Most of those around Jesus likely ran away from him lest they catch the contagion. Jesus moved in the opposite direction. To the leper’s plea of faith, “If you wish, you can make me clean,” Jesus, filled with compassion, stretched out his hand and touchedthe leper. We can almost hear the shrieks of onlookers two thousand years later. It was probably the first time a non-leper had touched him in years. Then Jesus said the words that were the answer to the man’s prolonged prayers: “I do will it. Be made clean!” He was thoroughly and immediately made whole. Jesus gave him instructions to go see the priest and go through the rites of the Mosaic law for testimony of a cure so that he, so long an outcast, could legitimately return to the human community.
• This is the Jesus we’re called to imitate. The Lord turns to each of us today and says, “Come, follow me!” (Lk 18:22) and, “I have done this as an example so that, as I have done for you, you also should do (Jn 13:15). We’re not called, necessarily, to imitate Jesus in caring for those with Hansen’s disease, because, thanks be to God and to the gift of modern medicine, leprosy has been mostly eradicated in the U.S. — with fewer than 200 cases per year — and in most of the world, where there are fewer than 200,000, located in 14 countries, with half still in India. Most of us — as far as I know — are not gifted with the Lord’s divine power to work stupendous miracles of healing, so we’re not called to imitate Christ the thaumaturgos. But what Christ is calling us to do is to love the outcasts with the same love that he does, the love which would make him go to the Cross again for them if he needed to.
• While thanks be to God there are fewer men and women with Hansen’s disease, there are still many outcasts. There are bodily lepers, whom the world considers ugly or unattractive, or whose illnesses are too long-lasting that few want to care for them or even to have society care for them at the end of life. There are psychological lepers, with mental illness or disabilities, whom some just relegate to institutions or allow them to live derelict on the streets. There are moral lepers, like drug addicts, prostitutes, death-row inmates, and those who have committed very public and embarrassing sins, who are shunned to the sidelines as practically irredeemable. There are economic lepers, like the homeless, the very poor, or those of a particular social class, who live ostracized from society and the things most of the rest of society take for granted. There are racial lepers, like gypsies and others, who, because of skin color or lineage are sent to the margins. There is a new class of “cancelled” lepers, who because of unpopular opinions or mistakes have been permanently excluded from enlightened society or even the possibility of employment. There are unborn lepers, who, because they’re unwanted by, or inconvenient to, parents, are left unprotected and able to be legally slaughtered. And there are many emotional lepers, who, because of their own psyche or others’ actions, feel complete alone and abandoned. All of these are among the ones Jesus wants us to reach out and heal through our very human touch, to bring back from the margins into communion.
• We see in the lives of the saints that very often their path to deep sanctity occurred when they cared for an outcast. One day St. Francis of Assisi was a carefree young man riding his horse outside of Assisi preparing to seek glory as a soldier in battle. He saw a leper on a path begging for alms. Francis’ horse jerked out of repugnance. Francis, himself, was filled with horror and disgust. Francis looked at the leper for what seemed like an eternity, but then dismounted, went to the man and took his emaciated, cold and inert hand and placed within it a coin. Then he lifted that hand up to his lips and kissed the wounded flesh of the abject man. As the leper withdrew his hand, Francis raised his head to look at him in the eyes, but the man was no longer there. Neither was the old Francis. Everything had changed. From that point forward he, and eventually the Franciscans around him, would visit the leper community two miles outside of Assisi to care for those present and he would seek to love everyone with the love with which they sought to love Christ in the disguise of a leper.
• In the life of St. Martin of Tours, a similar thing occurred. He was a Roman soldier approaching the gate of Amiens, France, on a frigid day. It was there that he met a homeless man, practically naked, shivering in the cold. Martin had no money to give him and so was just going to gallop on. But, moved by conscience, he got off his horse, took out his sword and cut his Roman cape in half, giving half of it to the poor man. When Martin went to sleep later that evening, Christ appeared to him in a dream wearing the other half of his cape and saying, “Martin has clothed me in his garment.” It was what led to his become Saint Martin of Tours.
• Likewise for us, the path to our sanctity begins with our loving those whom the world finds unlovable. As we learn from the examples of Saints Martin and Francis, Saints Vincent de Paul and Teresa of Calcutta, Saints Damien of Molokai and Marianne Cope, every time we care for an outcast, we are caring for Christ. The Lord himself told us that everything we do or fail to do to “one of the least of [his] brothers and sisters” we do, or fail to do, to him (cf. Mt 25:31-46). Christ takes on the disguise of the pariah and the amount of love we show the castaway is the amount of love we have for him. It’s easy to love those who are lovable, Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount. “Even pagans do as much” (Mt 5:46). But it’s hard to love those who are seemingly unlovable, and that’s the standard Jesus gives us. Like a leper, he himself became full of disgusting, open bodily wounds, was cast out of the city and left abandoned with other outcasts on crosses. As Isaiah wrote about him 700 years earlier, “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account. Surely, he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. … The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Is 53:2-6).” If we would draw near to Christ, he waits for us on a modern Calvary in the disguise of contemporary outcasts.
• Today’s Gospel is a powerful one to have on this World Day of the Sick, the traditional Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, in which the whole Church is called to pray for those who are sick and to seek to care for them, just as les malades are lovingly cared for in Lourdes. We see at that beautiful Marian sanctuary that the Lord himself often wills the cure of so many who approach him in faith through his Mother’s intercession, and today we bring to the Lord all those who are sick and have asked us to pray for them.
• Today’s Gospel is also a beautiful one to have three days before we begin the Holy Season of Lent. During Lent, each of us is called to approach Jesus with faith, with all our sins that are eating away our soul like Hansen’s disease destroys our flesh and bones, and say, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” Jesus wants to say to each of us in return, “I do will it. Be made clean.” Lent is a time of such cleansing. The practice of prayer helps us to overcome the leprosy of egocentrism to put God first. The practice of almsgiving helps us to conquer the leprosy of selfishness and put others ahead of ourselves. The practice of fasting helps us to triumph against the leprosy of pleasure-seeking, of making our bellies our god, so that we can learn how to hunger for what God hungers. It’s a period of purification. Each of us needs to be humble enough and smart enough to recognize our state and come to God so that he, moved with compassion, can stretch out his hand and touch us.
• This Gospel also provides perspective on today’s celebration of World Marriage Sunday, annually the second Sunday of February, close to St. Valentine’s Day, when we’re encouraged to focus our attention on the blessing of marriage as the mutual committed love of husband and wife and to thank married couples for all the sacrifices they make to build loving families that are the building block of society and the cells of the Mystical Body of Christ the Church. While we celebrate the gift of marriage and thank God for it, it’s also a day to take note of the various threats to marriage. The same evil one who tried to sabotage the marriage of Adam and Eve at the beginning goes after every marriage. And there are various ways marriages, and those in marriages, can become leprotic. The great leprosy is lust, which turns love from mutual self-giving to reciprocal utilitarianism and harmonious hedonisms. Many with the vocations to marriage never make it because their heart has been eaten away by porn and various sexual sins. Others within marriage give in to sins against fidelity like adultery, or against indissolubility like easy divorce, or against fruitfulness like contraception. Even the very notion of marriage can be eaten away by culture and the courts, making marriage a husbandless, wifeless, or intentionally childless institution. In the context of all of these soul-eating bacteria, this weekend we go before Jesus the Divine Bridegroom and beg, “If you wish, you can make us clean, … you can purify our eyes and hearts and homes and marriages.” Jesus wants to give us the gift of chastity, of purity of heart, of reverence for his image and others, so that human love may be truly loving.
• We see in today’s Gospel scene that Jesus doesn’t just say magic words to the leper, heal him, and then let him do whatever he pleased. Like with every healing, he wanted to lead him to greater faith. For that, he needed the leper’s grateful and trusting cooperation. Yet we see what happened in the Gospel. As soon as the leper got what he wanted, he started to do his own thing. Jesus told him sternly that, except for going to a levitical priest to fulfill the requirements of the Mosaic law to be reintegrated into society, “See that you tell no one anything.” Jesus well knew that if news of the miracle became widespread, everyone would be coming to him first as a free medical doctor and secondly as the long-awaited Messiah whom they would interpret in political terms, as someone who would boot the Romans and reinstitute a Davidic temporal kingdom. Jesus wanted to avoid those misconceptions because he had come not as a new political candidate or as a new Hippocrates but as a Savior. The former leper’s response to Jesus’ stern warning, however, was to ignore it totally. St. Mark says, “The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter. He spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly. Jesus remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere,” exactly validating Jesus’ concerns that underlined his warning and command. While the man was cured of the leprosy of his skin and body parts, he wasn’t cured of the leprosy of a partially hardened heart. He likely thought he had justification for doing so: after all, Jesus had given him the greatest gift of his life and what would it hurt, he probably convinced himself, publicly to praise him for it and become, though the process, a celebrity himself?
• The leprosy of a partially hardened heart — a heart that hears the Lord’s voice but responds selectively, according to our own desires, needs, and categories — can affect anyone, including us. We may listen attentively and put into practice Jesus’ words about praying always but harden our heart to his words about confessing our sins to those whom he has sent with the power to forgive and retain sins in his name. We may seek to enflesh his words about crossing the road to help someone in need when we feel like it but harden our hearts to Jesus’ word about welcoming strangers like immigrants as we would welcome him. We may faithfully keep the commandment to honor our parents but violate his command to forgive our siblings 70 times 7 times. If God speaks to us a word we want to hear, then we’ll do it eagerly; but if the Lord challenges us to do something we don’t want to do, often we’ll ignore God’s voice and listen to our own. Therefore, a real litmus test for us to see whether, out of the gratitude we have for having been cured by Jesus or never having been sick in the first place, is how we respond to what he commands us today at the end of Mass. He won’t tell us, like he commanded the healed leper, “See that you tell no one anything.” Rather, he will reiterate the great commission and instruct us, “Go to the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” He wants us to pass on the Gospel with far greater enthusiasm that fans of the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers are going to be cheering their lungs out during tonight’s Super Bowl. Jesus wants us to share with others the same healing Gospel he gives us, the same truth that will set us free, the same words of eternal life that will help us rise from sin and death. He will reach out his hand to touch us and cleanse us — but he wants us not to let go of his hand, but to journey with him in holiness each day, as we seek to do everything, eating, drinking and beyond, for God’s glory. To imitate Saint Paul, Saint Francis, Saint Martin, Saint Teresa of Calcutta, Saint Vincent, Saint Damien and Saint Marianne, as they imitated Christ, so that others after us may imitate us in our faithfully going to Christ to be made clean and then going out to announce the Gospel with our words and the way we respond to Christ in disguise who says to us, “I was ill and your cared for me.”

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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