Today, the World Day of the Sick, highlights the healing ministry of the Church. It reminds us that service to the sick and suffering cannot be neglected. It recognizes the great efforts of doctors, nurses, healthcare institutions and pastoral care givers to restore health to those afflicted with illness and disease. Appropriately, today’s gospel gives us account of Jesus healing the man of his leprosy. Leprosy, or Hansen's disease as it is also known, still exists today. It’s a bacterial decease affecting the nerves, respiratory tract, skin, and eyes. This may result in a lack of ability to feel pain, thus loss of parts of extremities due to repeated injuries or infection. Today it is curable by medication. In the ancient world leprosy was grouped in with other visible skin conditions and was most feared and dreaded. People with these conditions were forced to live apart from the general population, they must keep their distance while warning that they were leprous. Chapter 14: in the book of Leviticus gives details on how leprous people were controlled and the complicated rituals they had to follow to be allowed to re-enter the population, should their skin condition clear up. That is why Jesus instructs the man he has just healed, to go to the priests. It is interesting to note that Jesus also instructs him not to tell anyone how he came to be healed. Why? Physical healing was not the reason why the Father sent his Son into the world. The deadly condition Jesus came to heal was much deeper – it was the condition of death itself, and not physical death but eternal death, the death of sin. Euphoria over physical healing would cause people to see only that, and so fail to hear the deeper message of the gospel, which is exactly what started to happen. We read: - “… the man went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly but stayed out in the country; (and even then) people came to Jesus from every quarter.” It is interesting in or world today to listen to those who deny God, use the argument of healing to make their case. They say that it is medical science that cures leprosy not religion. Then they go on to argue that if there is a God why does he let leprosy exist at all – the classic “problem of evil”. They fail to understand that Jesus has come from the Father to enable all of us to become healers, by turning our hearts from hatred to compassion and love. The man with leprosy came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling said to Jesus, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” What the atheist fails to recognise is that it was in the countries imbued with the gospel of compassion and love, in Christian societies, that the sciences of healing medicine were discovered, fostered, and developed. Where the gospel of love shaped man’s thinking, the work of caregiving and healing flourished. Just imagine what good would be ours today if the energy and efforts spent on god-less war and hate hand been spent on finding healing, not on making war. Today’s World Day of the Sick reminds us of this dimension of our Christian faith, to be healers as Jesus was also a healer. |
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