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Homily for Friday after Epiphany, 10 Jan 2025, Lk 5:12-16
On two counts, the leper in the Gospel violated the Law of Moses. Firstly, he was not supposed to stay inside a town if he was afflicted by the disease of leprosy. He was supposed to isolate himself by staying in a cave in the wilderness, away from people, where his relatives could bring him some food provisions. Secondly, he was not supposed to come near people if he crossed paths with them. He was obliged by law to warn people by identifying himself as a person afflicted with leprosy and shouting from a distance, “Unclean! Unclean!”in order to give them the opportunity to run away. Luke tells us the man approached Jesus, knelt before him and pleaded with him. (See Num 5, Lev 13-14)
Well, Jesus also violated the law by doing what he was not supposed to do: he touched the leper. By doing this, we was compromising the health of many other people he was going to come into contact with. We can presuppose from the way Luke tells the story that his disciples had witnessed the contact. In the movie THE CHOSEN, the disciples’ instinctive reaction to the leper was to withdraw or keep a safe distance from him. Well, Jesus proves that a disease could not possibly be more contagious than the grace that comes with compassion.
Take note of the request; the leper does not say “If you can, please help me get cured of this terrible disease.” Rather, he says, “If you wish.” And Jesus does not just say “Yes, I wish it.” Rather, he says, “I do will it.” He is expressing a greater determination about wanting the man to be healed by willing it than just wishing it.
But he orders the man to keep quiet about it after he gets healed. Instead he instructs him to do as he was required by the Law of Moses—to submit himself to a bodily inspection by the priest, who would be the only one who could publicly declare him as officially cured and allow him to return to the community and his family after making the prescribed thanksgiving offering.
What follows is a reversal of situations. He is the one who ends up withdrawing to deserted places and going into solitude. He reaches out to people in their solitude of isolation in order to reunite them with the community. As a consequence, he ends up in solitude himself. But it was not the kind of solitude that isolated him. It was rather the solitude that brought him into a into a deeper and more intimate communion with his father, and drew more people to come to him and ask to be touched by him.
By going deeper into a solitude of communion through prayer, he is able to draw people out of their solitude of isolation and restore them and reunite them with the community. The other day we reflected on the amazing effects of prayer—on the disciples, on the environment, on Jesus himself. Today our Gospel teaches us how prayer leads us to the positive solitude of communion and has the power to draw people out of the negative solitude of isolation.
