Good News ReflectionFriday of the 12th Week in Ordinary TimeJune 26, 2009
Today's Readings:Gen 17:1, 9-10, 15-22Ps 128:1-2, 3, 4-5Matt 8:1-4http://www.usccb.org/nab/062609.shtmlAudio: http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/09_06_26.mp3
When Love Hurts: Healing the Lepers of Today
In today's Gospel reading, Jesus shows his compassion for a leper by healing him with a touch of his hand. Who are the lepers of today? In biblical times, lepers were outcasts, forced to spend the rest of their years in leper colonies because healthy people might catch the disease. Touch was forbidden.
How important touch is! Abandoned babies in institutions die from lack of touch. Marriages wither from lack of hugging. Children grow up with poor self esteem from lack of physical nurturing. Jesus knew how important touch is. He not only healed the leper's skin, he also healed his spirit by giving him what he needed most -- human touch.
Who are the lepers in your life, i.e., the people who need your healing touch but who repulse you? I propose that they are the addicts you know. It can be any kind of addiction, including the most subtle. The primary symptom is that they are difficult to love because they never try hard enough to change. They repeatedly give us more grief than anyone else.
What do addicts/lepers need most? The healing touch of love, which is the gift of mercy for those who don't deserve it. Jesus loves them unconditionally, and he wants us to do the same. The reason that addicts are addicts is because they never received enough love as children and they still don't know what love really is. They cannot give to us what they do not have.
However, Jesus is no longer here with a physical hand unless he touches the lepers through us. He needs us to reach out for him. They need us to be his healing hand, but this is a very difficult ministry. We prefer to limit our love to those who love us back. And yet, what they need most is our unconditional love -- or more accurately, Jesus' love coming to them through us.
To fulfill this mission, we have to be willing to forgive them over and over and over again. They don't know how to receive our love. They don't even know how to recognize it. So we have to persist and forgive and persist and forgive until finally -- finally! -- our love breaks through and the cleansing begins. And when they slip back into their old leprosy, we forgive them again. Our persistence in love, when combined with persistence in pointing them to other helping hands of Jesus, such as doctors and therapists, will eventually bring them all the way to the full cleansing that Jesus wants to give (although sometimes it doesn't happen until the moment of their death).
Remember, you do an important ministry with Jesus when you serve as his healing hand. And it's one of the most difficult ministries on earth. If we really want to be good Christians, we have to say yes to this calling. But we can succeed only if we continually turn to Jesus for strength, healing, and guidance.
* NOTE: If you are in an abusive relationship, your love will not make a difference unless the pattern of abuse is broken. Create separation until the abuser becomes safe to live through therapy and anger management training. And go to a counselor yourself to learn how to avoid enabling the disease.
A longer reflection on this is published as a Good News WordByte at http://wordbytes.org/healing/lepers.htm
© 2009 by Terry A. ModicaFor PERMISSION to copy any of my reflections, go to:http://gogoodnews.net/DailyReflections/copyrights-DR.htm
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