Current Homily

February 15, 2009

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Deacon David Shea

Lev 13:1-2, 44-46 X 1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1 X Mark 1:40-45

Carville was both a small village along the Mississippi River in southern Louisiana and the name of a facility for the isolation and treatment of lepers. From 1894 to 1999, it was the site of the only place in the United States for the treatment of the disease people did not name. Until the 1960’s, patients diagnosed with leprosy were legally quarantined at Carville. Many never left. It was an illness that aroused a sense of horror, even in the twentieth century. The disease was a mystery and it was thought to be physically and morally contagious. When Carville first opened its doors, it was more like a prison than a hospital. Those who lived there referred to it simply as a leper colony. Many of its patients were in horrible condition; some were kept in solitary confinement and made to suffer like criminals. Anyone who escaped was returned in handcuffs. They weren’t allowed to vote or marry, and women who got pregnant weren’t allowed to keep their babies or even touch them. Those exiled at Carville left everything behind, even their legal names and any hope of ever seeing their families again. If they survived, lepers were quarantined for years and even decades.

Leprosy was so frightening and so poorly understood that entire families would suffer and be shunned if but one family member contracted the disease. Tragic stories are told about patients dying in sealed railroad cars as they were shuttled back and forth across state lines while authorities argued about who was responsible for them—no one wanted a leper in their community.

When the leper approached Jesus from a distance and cried out to him for pity, little was different. As it was in Carville so it was in Galilee some two thousand years earlier. No disease was regarded with more terror than leprosy. In a time of no medical knowledge, no remedies, no antibiotics, no antiseptics, the only known safeguard was isolation. Lepers simply didn’t belong in society—leprosy was a disease of being unwanted. They weren’t even allowed to worship God. The foul and fetid smells of the disease repulsed anyone who dared approach them. Lepers were counted among the living dead—they dressed like corpses in shrouds. They were void of all hope—hope of dignity, hope of receiving love, hope of companionship, and hope of a future. Lepers were required to cover their heads so that not even their breath would touch another—they rang a bell, shouting out in warning, “Unclean, unclean!”

Jesus must have heard the leper calling out his warning from a distance. While all others scattered, Jesus stood motionless. The leper drew closer, knelt down before Jesus, extending his hands in a gesture of openness and desperation, and begged for healing, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” Jesus’ body responds right along with his heart. And what no one else would dare do, Jesus did—he reached out and touched the man and cured him. Words would have been enough—Jesus had cured so many others with words alone. But on this day he both spoke and touched. And in a strange reversal, he who was unclean was made clean, and Jesus, who was clean, was now identified with the lepers. He who was an outcast was restored to the community, and Jesus was now forced to remain on the outskirts.

What would it be like to hear the sound of a leper’s bell and a warning cry? What would it be like to come face-to-face with a leper? Oh, they’re not likely covered with pustules, scabs, and lesions, but they are the “modern day lepers.” There are many of them, and if we’re honest we’d admit to having our own list of lepers. The homeless, the drug users, the alcoholics, or those with AIDS. And if they don’t make our list, maybe it’s the fat, the pimply, or the aging. Perhaps it is those with cancer. We are embarrassingly repulsed by them and we may even convince ourselves that what they have we may somehow catch. We may even blame them for their afflictions and believe that it is their own fault—they made choices, they smoked, they ate too much, they lived they way they lived and now they’re paying the price. Who do we judge; who do we avoid?

Maybe we’re put off by touching hands that are twisted with arthritis, blemished by bulging veins, or dry and wrinkled skin. Somehow our attitudes and our judgments of these lepers are a mirror for our own lack of cleanliness, our own sinfulness—they reflect, deep within us, our fears and our guilt, our inability to be compassionate, our paralysis which renders us incapable of loving, respecting, and touching the lepers in our lives.

Our Lord, who shares our vulnerabilities and our suffering, waits for us in the Eucharist. Minutes from now, we’ll come forward with arms outstretched and hands open hungry for reconciliation and forgiveness. Minutes from now we’ll come seeking the touch that still cleanses and restores, pleading, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.” And once again, today and every day, Jesus says to us, just as he said to the leper, “I do will it. Be made clean.”

Inspiration and Resources:
Buetow, Harold A. All Things Made New. New York: Alba House, 1996.
Siciliano, Jude. “First Impressions.” http://www.op.org/exchange/
Wallace, James A., Robert P. Waznak and Guerric DeBona. Lift Up Your Hearts. New York: Paulist Press, 2006.