Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, February 13, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Vigil
February 13, 2021

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us this Sunday.
• One of the most physically disgusting and repulsive human beings imaginable — a leper — came up to Jesus, knelt down and begged Jesus to cure him. Lepers, as you know, have a bacterial infection that eats away at their flesh and gives them a sickening odor. At the time of Jesus, leprosy was considered so contagious that those with it were quarantined for life apart from the rest of 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 their jobs, from the synagogue and from the temple, 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 to shout out “Unclean!” “Unclean!” They were forbidden to come within a certain distance of others. Anyone who touched a leper became, in Jewish mentality, unclean. We can sometimes grumble today about wearing masks or undergoing quarantine and isolation, but these are temporary provisions; for many of the lepers in Jesus’ day, everything was far more severe and could last the rest of one’s life.
• That the man in today’s Gospel broke all convention to come close to Jesus was already a sign of his desperation. 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 touched the 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 of leprosy so that he, so long an outcast, could legitimately return to the human community.
• This Gospel is 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 bones and skin, and say, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” And Jesus wants to say to each of us in return, “I do will it. Be made clean.” Lent is the time of that 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 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, each of us needs to be 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 Sunday is also St. Valentine’s Day and the fortieth international observance of World Marriage Sunday, when we’re called 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, it’s also a day to take note of the various threats to marriage. The save evil one who tried to sabotage the marriage of Adam and Eve at the beginning goes after every marriage. And there are various ways individual 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, or reverence for his image and others, so that our love may be truly loving. We enter into prayerful conversation with him and ask for it!
• But just like with the leper in the Gospel, Jesus doesn’t just say magic words, heal us, and then let us do whatever we please. He wants to lead us to greater faith. But we have to cooperate. We see what happened in the Gospel. As soon as the leper got what he wanted, he started to do his own thing. St. Mark tells us that Jesus wanted him to grow in trusting obedience and therefore commanded him to go to the levitical priests.  He also warned him sternly, “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 primarily as a new Hippocrates but as a Savior. The former leper’s response to Jesus’ stern warning not to tell anyone anything, was, however, 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. He 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. When he heard the voice of the Lord telling him not to do something, he blew him off. 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 told himself, publicly to praise him for it? But the simple fact of the matter is that he blatantly disobeyed the Lord’s command.
• 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 as we would welcome him when we don’t feel like it. We may faithfully keep the commandment to honor our parents but violate his command to forgive our siblings 70 times 7 times. We may faithfully heed his word about the Mass, to eat his flesh and drink his blood, but totally ignore his commission to go to every creature we know and proclaim the Gospel. If God speaks to us a word we want to hear, then often we’ll do it; 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.
• This challenge is quite relevant to us in the two applications we’ve considered. This Lent the Lord calls us to holiness through uniting ourselves to him in prayer, fasting and almsgiving. He’ll tell us on Wednesday, “When you fast, when you give alms, when you pray.” Will we heed his words or do our own thing? Likewise with regard to love, marriage, sex and family, do we do what he teaches us through his Church or do we do what Hugh Hefner, or Harvey Milk, or Ru Paul teach us through the media? Jesus wants to cleanse us but do we want to cooperate with that purifying work?
• At the end of our consequential conversation with Jesus this Sunday, he won’t tell us, “See that you tell no one anything.” Rather, he will reiterate the great commission when he told us, “Go to the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” He 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, in our love life and marriages, in Ordinary Time and Lent, in short always. May our encounter with him have that type of life-changing impact. God bless you!

The Gospel on which the homily was based was: 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download