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6th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Added Feb 12, 2018 •

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Fr. Tom Wilson, Pastor February 11, 2018

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I think most of us are at least vaguely familiar with the very famous leper colony in Moloki in Hawaii. It was started in 1866 and doing a little bit of history on it I learned that one of the reasons that it got started, among several I suspect was that there sugar plantation owners on the larger islands in Hawaii that were very worried that they would lose their source of labor if leprosy began to spread. So they pushed for this quarantine on the island of Moloki and if you know the churches history in that you know that Saint Damien, Father Damien, a Belgian priest and sister Mary Ann Coulter a nurse who brought a group of sisters there in the early 1900’s both became saints in their service to the people on the island of Moloki
We know the reality of leprosy. It is a pretty debilitating disease physically especially with the damaged joints and the lesions on the skin. It is also very, very communicable and all that so as you look back we look at the inhumaneness, but when you look at the necessity of quarantine it doesn’t sound that bad. But if you look at the history of Moloki there are things that are far worse than just the quarantine. The lived experience of people with leprosy was far greater than anything physical that they were experiencing.
One little portion of that that I think symbolizes what they actually went through was if a woman became pregnant and had a baby on the island immediately after that child was born that child was taken away from her never to be seen again. Put into families on other islands because they fear what might happen to the child, believing that someone with leprosy would not be capable of raising a child. That is brutal, we look back on that and understandably see the horrific pain and inhumane treatment that they experienced. And the truth is that the leprosy physically is incredibly damaging, but it was also socially isolating and the spiritual and the emotional part were probably far worse for those that experienced it.
As we go through our readings today – we have 2 readings that talk about the reality of leprosy. In Leviticus we got communicating the law to the people and how the people with leprosy need to identify themselves and essentially be isolated from the community in order to prevent the disease from being spread. And then also the prescription for returning to the priest to be declared clean if it happened to go away. Then we have Jesus cleansing the man with leprosy who went up in his great faith believing that Jesus could be healed and Jesus does it. In his goodness and his mercy he does it and then invites him to go and do what the law prescribes presenting himself to the priest, so that he could not only experience the physical healing from the leprosy but also to be restored spiritually and emotionally to the community. The isolation and all that is far greater than any physical pain.
It might seem a little bit odd and bit of a stretch that as we jump off our ordinary time and get ready to step into Lent, Lent begins Wednesday, that we have these readings about leprosy. What in the world would leprosy have to do with the season of lent? But if we look at what lent is and we look at the symbolism of leprosy I think the two  - it’s a perfect transition actually. If we see leprosy in a symbolic way of anything that we might suffer, any disease or ailment physically, emotionally or spiritually it gives us the opportunity then to recognize that and go into the season of lent wanting to be able to learn about them but also to experience healing.
The church gives us the holy season of lent not just to mortify ourselves physically and to prove how tough we are and how what we can sacrifice and how good we might be to other people for 6 weeks or whatever it is. Actually it is a time of purification, a time of cleansing, it’s a time of healing it’s a time of growth. We use those things, we use our practices of sacrificing things, we use practices of additional prayer, we use our practices of recognizing people around us who are in deep need and responding to that the best we can in a very conscious way. But it also brings a renewed vision. It brings a renewed vision of who we are as human beings. I suspect if I took a brief survey of us and asked for a show of hands of anybody who thought that maybe they need to improve their prayer life almost all of our hands would go up in a realistic and humble notion of where we are spiritually, but in the midst of all that in the midst of our practices what we get the opportunity to do is to recognize what’s going on inside of us as well. Its not purely external, we do a lot of external things in order to burrow down into what’s going on internally. Because the truth is while none of us has leprosy, it has basically been functionally eradicated from most of the world, we all have illness, we’ve all got something going on inside of us and the truth is that the people who suffered from leprosy at least had the advantage of knowing exactly what was going on. They knew exactly what their disease was, even if they didn’t know historically exactly where it came from, they knew what it was, they knew what had to happen in order for them to be restored to the community and the whole bit. It was very very obvious, very plain.
But we also know that the undiagnosed illness, the undiagnosed ailment is always the most dangerous. It’s always the most dangerous because it eats away at us without us even knowing it. In the modern culture and world that we live in gives us every opportunity and every distraction to be running away from those things that are hurtful and painful that maybe we don’t’ even recognize, those spiritual ailments and illnesses within us that we might not even see because we’re on a treadmill of life that keeps us going and going and going in our relatively comfortable and modern life. One of the premier tactics of the enemy is to get us moving so fast that we are distracted from the things that are most important in life and don’t think about the things that actually might be harming us. 
And the truth is that lent in its fullness, lent in practice in the way that the church gives to us gives us the opportunity in our spiritual practices to look down and see what those things are so that we can recognize our illness just like the man with leprosy and bring them to Jesus for his healing. That is what the season is about and then we can be prepared to celebrate Jesus’ victory on the cross. 
I am holding here this little blue book, Perfectly Yourself by Matthew Kelly, I hope it looks familiar to most of you. This was given out around Christmas time and I’m not going to ask for a show of hands of those who’ve read it yet. But if you are like me you are challenging for the world championship of owned but unread books.  Alright – if you are challenging me quit the challenge. This is a wonderful read for the season of lent, What Matthew does is go through and he identifies a lot of things that can clutter our lives. A lot of things that the world tells us will make us satisfied that somehow will create a sense of satisfaction in our life that really don’t and there are very simple basic tasks and exercises to do in every chapter to help us realize the treadmill that we are on probably is not really the direction God wants us to be in and if we discover that in the reality of our own imperfections but take it in the direction that God is calling us to do not to be miserable, but to be joyful we then recognize the places in our life that truly need healing and we can grow.
So highly recommended. If you haven’t read it yet start it for lent, maybe 20 minutes a day for 3 weeks and you will get through it and be able to do it and to recognize those things. The truth is we all have them, we all have these ailment within our hearts that cause spiritual sluggishness that cause confusion and doubt and all those sorts of things that weigh heavy upon us that prevent us from being the total person that God calls us to, that God calls us wants us and desires us to be. But if we step off the treadmill and set those things aside, we do these practices we will recognize more deeply the person that God wants us to be. We will recognize the things that need to be healed in our lives. Then we can go in faith to Jesus just like the leper in the Gospel of Mark today and present ourselves to the healing and hear the words of Jesus, I will let you be healed, and experience that so we can truly live his call and be the person He desires us to be.

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6th Sunday in Ordinary Time

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