The readings this Sunday present two religious responses to people who suffered leprosy. One way assumes the outward blemish is a sign of inner moral failure. It prescribes banishment and separation.

The term leprosy as used in these readings should not be narrowly interpreted to include only those who suffered from Hansen’s disease. In the biblical era, anyone with a visible sore or skin condition might be said to have leprosy.

So here you are, moving through life cheerfully in the midst of family, community, career. And one day you wake up with a mark on your skin. It itches. Maybe in a day or two it starts to peel, crack, bleed, or ooze.

After spring break, a priest and fellow teacher with few remnants of the full head of hair he once had, returned to school fitted with a toupee.

“I just want my $1,500 dollars,” the man complained to the agent answering the compliance hotline. “It’s reimbursement for my gas and mileage. The clinics I service are refusing to pay even though it’s in my contract, and now they’re calling into question my job performance.

The day after 8th grade my family moved, and all summer long I missed my friends back in the city. So I invited my friend Billy to spend the weekend.

Christ brought a new healing to the world. In faith we turn to God who takes away sin.

Whether you eat or drink . . . do everything for the glory of God. Reading this passage in its larger context, Paul has been responding since Chapter 8 of this epistle to the question of whether Christians should eat meat sacrificed to pagan gods—a serious issue given how sacrifice provided a substantial portion of the meat supply.

Each one of us can be healed by God every day. We have only to worship him with humility and love, and wherever we are to say with faith: Lord, if you want to you can make me clean. It is by believing from the heart that we are justified, so we must make our petitions with the utmost confidence, and without the slightest doubt of God’s power. —Saint Paschasius Radbertus (c. 785-860)