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Exploring the word

13 Oct 2013 - Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

There are two kinds of people in society: the healthy and the sick. We have many ways of dividing these populations. We confine the ill to hospitals, nursing homes, care facilities, sickbeds—and that is often necessary for their best interests. But other ways we separate the sick from the well do not serve their interests at all, but ours. We avoid and neglect them, stop calling and visiting, put them out of sight and out of mind. We do this because weakness makes us anxious, reminds us too much of our own mortality. When a friend confides in us a diagnosis of cancer or AIDS or another debilitating condition, we may have to fight an urge to withdraw from them physically and emotionally. Biblical leprosy is the ultimate metaphor for the isolation of illness. Ancient Israel had a strong sense of social organization, represented beautifully by the first creation story. Out of chaos God brings forth the cosmos with its grand divisions and balanced organization. This universe makes life possible. A return to chaos threatens everything, so Israel guarded against mixing things up. No two fibers would be woven into one material. This food cannot touch that one. Nor should the living touch the dead. When such contact was unavoidable, impurity resulted. That had to be resolved before the unclean person could rejoin society. Otherwise the disorder might spread. As Carmelite friar Don Benjamin points out, “Skin, clothes, and walls are social surfaces or borders that mark the frontiers between cosmos where life is possible and chaos where it is not.” In this worldview, leprosy is not a medical condition so much as a threat to the social order. Its cure therefore was sought not with medicines but with rituals. Lepers were required “to die and be reborn,” wearing shrouds like corpses, not cutting their hair, wailing like mourners. Through this humiliation, a leper’s hope was confined to the healing authority of self-degradation and God’s mercy. Jesus turns the world upside down with a radical repatriation of these social victims. It’s a sign of the Kingdom that lepers become citizens once more. Those who are ritually dead are raised up, on the spot, and returned to their families, to their labors, to all that makes life purposeful and meaningful. It’s the sort of action that makes Pharisees and Temple priests crazy, of course. It cuts across those lines so fiercely drawn by the purity codes. If we want to participate in this radical sign of the Kingdom, though, all we have to do is ride a social diagonal ourselves. Visit a nursing home. Accompany a sick friend to chemo. Share a meal with someone who’s “terminal.” Affirm life in the living and allow Christ in you to raise someone up. Related scripture links Other lepers in the Bible: Exod. 4:6-8; Num. 12:9-15; 2 Kings 7:3-11; 15:5; Matt. 8:1-4; Mark 1:40-45; Luke 5:12-16 Biblical leprosy defined: Lev. 13-14 Psalms of thanksgiving: 1 Chron. 16:8-36; Pss. 9, 10, 18, 30, 34, 41, 65, 92, 116, 118, 136, 138 Jesus expresses gratitude before the miracle: John 11:41 Catechism links Church structure: CCC 669; 771; 871-933; 1655-58 Jesus and hierarchy: CCC 583-586 Death in Christ is life: CCC 1010-1014

Authors Alice Camille

lepers leprosy sickness

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In other words

13 Oct 2013 - Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

IT HAPPENED that as he made his way toward Jerusalem, he crossed over the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten men, all lepers, met him. They kept their distance but raised their voices, calling out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Taking a good look at them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” They went, and while still on their way, became clean. One of them, when he realized that he was healed, turned around and came back, shouting his gratitude, glorifying God. He kneeled at Jesus’ feet, so grateful. He couldn’t thank him enough—and he was a Samaritan. Jesus said, “Were not ten healed? Where are the nine? Can none be found to come back and give glory to God except this outsider?” Then he said to him, “Get up. On your way. Your faith has healed and saved you” (from Luke 17). From A New Message 4 Next Week (actapublications.com/newmessage4nextweek) based on The Message: Catholic/Ecumenical Edition by Eugene Peterson (ACTA Publications, 2013).

Faith lepers leprosy

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Sainthood for one who suffered in solidarity

18 Oct 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

"Because of his affliction he shall see the light in fullness of days," it is said of the "Suffering Servant" in this Sunday's reading from the Book of Isaiah. Father Damien of Moloka'i, a Belgian-born priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, was elevated to sainthood Sunday for his ministry in Hawaii to those with Hansen's disease, otherwise known as leprosy. Saint Damien himself contracted and died from the disease in 1884 at the age of 49. After being sent to Hawaii as a missionary, Damien volunteered to minister to those who, under a government-sanctioned medical quarantine, had been banished to Kalaupapa, a settlement on the Hawaiian island of Moloka'i. He worked there for 16 years, sitting by the bedsides of the sickest, hearing their confessions, washing their bodies, and bandaging their wounds. People began calling for his elevation to sainthood shortly after his death. Damien, said Pope Benedict XVI during the ceremony, "not without fear and repugnance," chose to go to Molokai and risked his health to serve the patients "who were there, abandoned by all," and went on to feel "at home with them." For centuries leprosy was one of the most feared diseases, although doctors have since learned it is not easily transmitted and can be cured with antibiotics. Damien's image, vividly showing leprosy lesions on his face, was draped from the basilica's façade during Sunday's celebration. Included as well among those added to the church's roll of saints was French nun Jeanne Jugan, who helped the elderly, including some abandoned by their families. Jugan, also known as Marie de la Croix, was "an authentic Mother Teresa ahead of her time," Vatican Radio said. Her Little Sisters of the Poor order of nuns today runs homes for older people worldwide. She died in 1879. A Polish bishop and two Spaniards were also canonized. Source: Articles by Rose Ybarra for Catholic News Service, Frances D'Emilio for the Associated Press, United Press International, Wikipedia.org, and HonoluluAdvertiser.com

Saints hawaii kalaupapa joseph de veuster hansens disease sainthood molokai father damien leprosy canonization missionaries
Homily stories

16 Sep 2012 - Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

PAUL-EMILE Léger became archbishop of Montreal in 1950 and a cardinal three years later and was an active participant in the Second Vatican Council, but in 1967 he gave all that up in order to go to Senegal and Dahomey to work with disabled and impoverished children and those suffering from leprosy. In Cameroon he established some 40 projects for handicapped children, including the Fame Pereo Institute for Lepers and the Center for the Rehabilitation of the Handicapped, despite having a less-than-rigorous management style. For the next several years he went back and forth between Canada and Africa engaged in pastoral and charitable work. Even after he fully retired in 1979, he visited the refugee camps of Cambodians, Laotians, and Vietnamese in Thailand in 1980-81 and founded a hospital for lepers in India in 1982 and in Haiti in 1985. Cardinal Léger went far beyond the Letter of James’ call to not only to say to someone in need “go in peace, keep warm, and eat well” but also to “give them the necessities of the body,” but then again following requires sacrifice: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”

Authors Joel Schorn

leprosy Works letter of james

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The inner word

15 Feb 2009 - Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

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. Jesus’ way recognizes the sufferer’s inner longing and faith. His touch heals the outer body into harmony with the inner beauty. Fear fuels the move to isolate, separate, and judge. But faith heals—so much so that it is a secret too good to be kept. In what ways does fear narrow the scope of my life? Do I pay primary attention to what’s going on inside people rather than to appearances? Do I pay enough attention to my fear, not to be a slave to it, but to learn valuable lessons about where my faith may need shoring up? Can I name a time when I experienced healing (of body, mind, spirit, or relationship) that made me feel whole and accepted again?

failure leprosy jesus Faith heal

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Who's listening?

15 Feb 2009 - Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

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. What was true of all of these people was that they were likely to be feared, shunned, and excluded from the full life of the community. Within your community, perhaps it’s best to think today of people who are not present and why: parishioners in nursing homes parishioners in prison unemployed people ashamed to leave the house people whose marriage has failed people who suffer mental illness people who don’t feel they are “good enough” to be in church.

leprosy Community parishioner prision mental illness nursing homes

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Exploring the word

15 Feb 2009 - Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

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. The hairs around the affected patch whiten or fall out. People start pointing and whispering, falling silent when you come near. Then the priest comes to your house and declares you unclean. With that single word, it’s the end of the world as you know it. Unclean means you can’t live at home anymore. You say good-bye to your family. You can’t live in town anymore, so you take a blanket and supplies and make a tent in the hills with a view of your old house. Your front door is just a small dark spot from here. People come and go there. But not you. You can’t provide for your spouse anymore, can’t care for your kids. You wonder how long before they make plans that don’t include you. Charitable folk sometimes carry old bread and maybe spoiling vegetables to the edge of town and leave it there—for you or for the other lepers, whoever gets there first. You’re still itching, oozing, and hoping this thing will clear up on its own. It’s not like you can see a doctor; and with a poor diet and this harsh environment, chances are the condition gets worse before it gets better. And then Jesus comes to town, and you remember hearing amazing things about him, and so you decide to take the chance and force an audience when he comes close to the edge of the community. “You can make me clean,” you insist. “If you want to,” you add. And he does. And he says, “Don’t tell anybody. Just see the priest to pronounce you cured.” What would you do? Not telling is simply not possible, it seems to me. Even if Jesus asks you, not telling that you’ve gotten your life back—your health and family and home and livelihood—is out of the question. When the news is this good, you simply have to tell. You have to shout, sing, dance, and do performance art describing what happened. You have to occupy the village square for the next five years and deliver the story from the top. It has to become a fixture in your identity: the lady or guy who got cured of leprosy by Jesus. And this is what the gospel writers mean by proclaiming the kingdom of God. If this good news comes to you, if your life is restored and renewed as a result of meeting Jesus, you’ll talk about it. You have to. You have no choice. Related scripture links Other laws regarding leprosy and uncleanness: Lev. 14:33-53; 15 Naaman the leper: 2 Kings 5:1-19 Lepers and Jesus: Luke 5:12-16; 7:22; 17:11-19; Matt. 8:1-4; 10:8; 11:5 Fear is useless: Mark 5:36 (Unrevised NAB translation) Catechism links Our place: CCC 225; 299; 340; 344; 355-361; 374-379; 2407; 2809 Exile: CCC 714; 1608; 2443-2449 Faith in healing: CCC 2616

Authors Alice Camille

leprosy jesus proclaiming the kingdom good news

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The inner word

11 Feb 2018 - Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

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. Jesus’ way recognizes the sufferer’s inner longing and faith. His touch heals the outer body into harmony with the inner beauty. Fear fuels the move to isolate, separate, and judge. But faith heals—so much so that it is a secret too good to be kept. In what ways does fear narrow the scope of my life? Do I pay primary attention to what’s going on inside people rather than to appearances? Do I pay enough attention to my fear, not to be a slave to it, but to learn valuable lessons about where my faith may need shoring up? Can I name a time when I experienced healing (of body, mind, spirit, or relationship) that made me feel whole and accepted again?

lepers leprosy Healing wholeness fear

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Exploring the word

11 Feb 2018 - Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Growing up in a small coal town in the East, everything about our lives was circumscribed by the mines. Most of the men worked in the mines. Families lived in row homes owned by the mining companies. We kids played on the banks created by the digs, and begged the steam shovel drivers to beep their horns for us. There is a remarkable parity in such communities. Nobody is better off than anyone else. And yet, even in this homogenous world where everyone was apparently in the same boat, we had our own kind of underclass. Mentally disabled people were shunned on the streets. Children deemed “illegitimate” through no fault of their own were hidden away indoors, not allowed to play with the rest of us. A family that suffered from chronic eczema was declared untouchable. We would watch the children scratch till they bled on their porch, and make up scary stories about them as children will. In our ignorance, we thought direct contact with such suffering would somehow leave its mark on us. Years later in another city, long after I forgot all these faces and stories, I developed a mild case of adult eczema. The first time I scratched until I bled, I thought of how we had treated those sad children. Lepers, then and now Leprosy, technically known as Hansen’s disease, is a relatively contained phenomenon in the developed world, as are many diseases that once ravaged communities and brought heartbreak to many households. But of course, biblical lepers did not all suffer from technical leprosy. Any condition that made your neighbors fearful and suspicious could lead to your being banished from the community. People tend to loathe what makes them afraid. It’s partly an involuntary response: Survival once dictated that we avoid or attack things we fear in order to be safe. The adrenaline still works, but often in history the impulse to eliminate what we fear has betrayed us. Fear is a primitive human program, and so we tend to shun or attack without benefit of reason. Watch what happens when someone is diagnosed with cancer or some other serious illness. Suddenly their relationships are reshuffled like a deck of cards. We respond to the sick, not based on our closeness and care for them, but based on the level of our ability to control the fear. Sometimes even family members abandon one another in the hour of greatest need, because the sign of want or disability or dying is too fearful to surpass. As a society, we create whole castes of lepers without even realizing it. Location can effectively inoculate uptown churches against downtown problems. We have urban projects for the poor, hospitals for the sick, and residences for the aging. The upside of some of these systems is that people get the care they need, but the downside is that they risk being estranged and isolated from the whole of life. Genuine human suffering is so fearful to us, we are always tempted to move it to the sidelines where we don’t have to see it. Contact with such suffering just might leave its mark. Curing lepers Sometimes Jesus cured people from a distance, the way he healed an official’s sick servant without even going to his house. So you would think he might affect such a cure with a leper, since the last thing anyone wanted to do was go near such a person. But Jesus doesn’t make that choice. First he feels compassion for the suffering he is witnessing. Next, he stretches out his hand and touches a man known to be “unclean.” And then he wills the healing to be accomplished. And it is. This three-step process works on modern lepers, too. We have to start with compassion, daring to connect on a fundamental human level with people whose situation or condition makes us afraid. That means dealing with our own insecurity and anxiety about need, failure, weakness, disability, and death. We don’t want to “go there.” But mortality means we are all headed, fast or slow, in the general direction of the poverty of limitation. We also have to be willing to touch lepers. We have to visit the sick and the homebound, stick with those in our communities who face misfortune, and remain faithful to members of our family who reveal to us what we don’t want to see. We have to be willing to look the homeless woman in the face, and to develop respectful relationships with people regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, orientation, religion, ability, or social class. Finally, we have to find the will to challenge any attitude, behavior, or structure that keeps people outside the camp of social concern. We have to will that no one be considered unclean or unworthy. Related scripture links Other laws regarding leprosy and uncleanness: Lev. 14:33-53; 15 Naaman the leper: 2 Kings 5:1-19 Lepers and Jesus: Luke 5:12-16; 7:22; 17:11-19; Matt. 8:1-4; 10:8; 11:5 Fear is useless: Mark 5:36 Catechism links Our place: CCC 225; 299; 340; 344; 355361; 374379; 2407; 2809 Exile: CCC 714; 1608; 24432449 Faith in healing: CCC 2616

Authors Alice Camille

mining lepers leprosy fear Suffering Healing Compassion

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