Few of us today suffer from leprosy, and it is a curable illness. How can we identify then with the leper in today's Gospel who prostrated himself before Jesus and pleaded to be healed? In Jesus' time, leprosy was a mysterious, terrifying illness with no cure. Jews were so in dread of catching leprosy that lepers were sent into isolation. No Jew could go near them, visit with them, touch them. So, lepers not only suffered from the disease itself: leprosy is an infectious disease which causes severe, disfiguring skin sores and nerve damage in the arms, legs, and skin areas around your body. But they suffered perhaps even more from the extreme emotional pain of being separated from their loved ones and living in social isolation. And, think of how their loved ones suffered from this enforced separation!
Yet, do you know how leprosy is spread? It is, like COVID, an airborne infection, spread by respiratory droplets. Think of today's COVID patients, isolated from their families, suffering without a relative's smile, voice, comforting hand; think of how their relatives suffer during this enforced separation. Today, so many of us prostrate ourselves spiritually before Jesus, asking for a cure for ourselves or our loved ones, for a country, a world, suffering from a terrible pandemic without one easy cure. We can hear God's partial answer to our prayers in the vaccines being developed and our opportunities to be vaccinated.
But even though we may be physically disease-free, there is a deeper way to look at the Gospels' healing stories and Jesus' role in our lives as Healer. Each one of us, every day of our lives, needs some kind and level of spiritual healing. In some way, each of us has a spiritual sickness or immaturity which infects our souls, makes us feel isolated in some way, and causes our souls to ache for wellness. In today's Gospel Reflection, which is about Jesus and the leper, Bishop Robert Barron says,
"What in you has become leprous? What in you is being called back to intimacy with Christ?
"Notice the dynamics of the cure in this story. The leprous man comes to Jesus and prostrates himself and asks to be healed. There is no example of healing in the New Testament that does not involve some sort of synergy between Jesus and the one to be cured.
"That in you which needs healing must come and prostrate itself before Christ and ask to be received. And of course he wants to heal. That is why he has come."
We could put this another way. Holiness is all about understanding and living out our connectedness with God and with the world - people, animals, the rest of nature. In what way or ways have we allowed our souls to become infected with a spiritual numbness, an indifference, that cuts us off from God or from other people or from creation? This indifference can be as spiritually disfiguring as leprosy is physically disfiguring. A soul disfigured by indifference is wrapped up in itself, its own wants, needs, defensiveness. This may happen in one of our relationships, or in our attitude towards a particular group or class of people. This indifference to others afflicts the way we usually first look at others, approach others, interact with others.
How often have you seen a person, begun a conversation, or become part of an event, and in the first minute or so, you feel yourself withdraw into your own safe, indifferent, protective inner cocoon? Then perhaps you say a quick prayer, and your vision/understanding of the person or event begins to change, to deepen, and suddenly you discover new empathy or understanding. Your first gaze, your first response, was that numb, indifferent, self-interested one. Then in your quick prayer, you met Jesus the Healer. Jesus healed your perspective so you could take a second look, have a second, truer gaze. Jesus empowered you to see the person, persons, or the event as He understood it.
Fr. Richard Rohr says that in every situation or interaction with another, our first reaction, our "first gaze," is usually self-absorbed, indifferent to anyone else's presence, which is the usual knee-jerk, cruise control, reaction of the "smaller self." The spiritual remedy for this kind of spiritual illness is prayer. Only the discipline of placing ourselves in/under God's Gaze on a routine basis can lift us out of the narrowness of our own selves and into the expansiveness of God's Vision. Only then can we give the "second gaze," the open, vulnerable true response to the event or the other person. He explains it this way:
"I can see why all spiritual traditions insist on some form of daily prayer; in fact, morning, midday, evening, and before-we-go-to-bed prayer would be a good idea too! Otherwise, we can assume that we will fall right back in the cruise control of small and personal self-interest, the pitiable and fragile smaller self.
"The first gaze is seldom compassionate. It is too busy weighing and feeling itself: 'How will this affect me?' or 'How does my self-image demand that I react to this?' or 'How can I get back in control of this situation?' This leads to an implosion of self-preoccupation that cannot enter into communion with the other or the moment. In other words, we first feel our feelings before we can relate to the situation and emotion of the other. Only after God has taught us how to live “undefended” can we immediately (or at least more quickly) stand with and for the other, and for the moment.....
"In the second gaze, critical thinking and compassion are finally coming together. It is well worth waiting for, because only the second gaze sees fully and truthfully. It sees itself, the other, and even God with God’s own eyes, the eyes of compassion, which always move us to act for peace and justice. But it does not reject the necessary clarity of critical thinking, either." (From Fr. Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation for January 1, 2021.)
Pope Francis offers another, equally valid way to look within ourselves to see where we need inner healing. He asks us to look in our minds, hearts, and souls, to find that deepest, maybe darkest place where we are ashamed of ourselves. Our shame might come from a past sin we can't forget, or a present sin that we can't let go of, or a bad habit, or a personal personality quirk that will never change and we do not understand it. This shame bothers us so much that it keeps us from spiritual peace. This is precisely the place where Jesus wants to heal us! He understands us because he is both divine and human. Since he is human, he understands our human frailty. Because he is divine, he can go directly inside us to where our pain is. He yearns to heal us.
"Dear brother, dear sister, God became flesh to tell us, to tell you that He loves us like that, in our frailty, in your frailty; right there, where we are most ashamed, where you are most ashamed. This is bold, God’s decision is bold: He took on flesh precisely where very often we are ashamed; He enters into our shame, to become our brother, to share the path of life." (Journey With the Pope, Friday, January 8.)
The above painting, by Canadian artist Melani Pyke, is entitled "Healed and Thankful." It is so modern - we can immediately identify with the boy dressed as we dress. This teaches us the timelessness, the universality, of our ongoing need for healing. And when we humbly prostrate ourselves before God in openness, undefended, honest about our need to become spiritually well, God always hears us. Our healing begins immediately. We are not totally healed overnight. God works with us, walks with us, at our own individual pace. Our healing may take years. Or a lifetime. Have faith that Jesus shares with us our own path of life.
But, if we pray for healing, we will sense that ongoing healing, the new freedom from self-absorption, indifference, the need for control. We will pray more routinely, move more easily from our self-absorbed, indifferent "first gaze" into that "second gaze" in which we can relate with God's wisdom and compassion with the event, with the other person. We can slowly begin to let go of sinful habits and shame over past sins and mistakes and our all-to-human idiosyncrasies. We can, finally, experience ongoing thankfulness and joy because our God is our first, our Divine Healer.
"That in you which needs healing must come and prostrate itself before Christ and ask to be received. And of course he wants to heal. That is why he has come."