Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time, B, Vigil
February 10, 2024
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.10.24_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3
The following text guided the homily:
* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us this Sunday, when one of the most physically disgusting and repulsive human beings imaginable — a leper — came up to Jesus, knelt down and begged Jesus to cure him. Lepers, as you know, have a bacterial infection that eats away their flesh and bones and gives them a sickening odor. At the time of Jesus, leprosy was considered so contagious that those with it were quarantined for basically the rest of their life apart from the community. They had no one with whom to associate or to care for them — except other lepers. They were cut off from their family, from work, from the synagogue and temple, and basically from love and mercy. They were outcasts, ostracized from all things human. They had to wear ripped clothes and keep their hair messy so that others would be able to spot them easily from a distance. Whenever they needed to travel to obtain something, they were mandated by Mosaic law to shout out “Unclean!” “Unclean!” They were forbidden to come within a certain distance of others. Anyone who touched a leper became, in Jewish mentality, unclean.
* That the man in today’s Gospel broke all convention to come close to Jesus was already a sign of his desperation. What was Jesus’ reaction to this miserable, nauseating creature on his knees before him? Most of those around Jesus likely ran away from him lest they catch the contagion. Jesus moved in the opposite direction. To the leper’s plea of faith, “If you wish, you can make me clean,” Jesus, filled with compassion, stretched out his hand and touched the leper. We can almost hear the shrieks of onlookers two thousand years later. It was probably the first time a non-leper had touched him in years. Then Jesus said the words that were the answer to the man’s prolonged prayers: “I do will it. Be made clean!” He was thoroughly and immediately made whole. Jesus gave him instructions to go see the priest and go through the rites of the Mosaic law for testimony of a cure of leprosy so that he, so long an outcast, could legitimately return to the human community.
* This Gospel is a beautiful one to have three days before we begin the Holy Season of Lent. During Lent, each of us is called to approach Jesus with faith, with all our sins that are eating away our soul like Hansen’s disease destroys our flesh and bones, and say, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” And Jesus wants to say to each of us in return, “I do will it. Be made clean.” Lent is a time of such cleansing. The practice of prayer helps us to overcome the leprosy of egocentrism to put God first. The practice of almsgiving helps us to conquer the leprosy of selfishness and put others ahead of ourselves. The practice of fasting helps us to triumph against the leprosy of pleasure-seeking, of making our bellies our god, so that we can learn how to hunger for what God hungers. It’s a period of purification. Each of us needs to be humble enough, each of us needs to be smart enough, to recognize our state and come to God so that he, moved with compassion, can stretch out his hand and touch us.
* This Sunday is also World Marriage Sunday, when we’re called to focus our attention on the blessing of marriage as the mutual committed love of husband and wife and to thank married couples for all the sacrific...
