3rd Epiphany
Matthew 8, 1-13
When he came down from the mountain, large crowds
followed him. And behold, a man with leprosy approached him, and kneeling down
before him said, “Lord, if you are willing, you are able to make me clean.”
Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him
saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.”
And immediately he was cleared of his leprosy. And
Jesus said to him, “See that you tell no one. But go and show yourself to the
priests and offer to them the gift that Moses commanded as a testimony of your
cleansing.”
When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a Roman captain,
leader of a hundred soldiers, approached him, pleading with him and saying,
“Lord, my boy lies at home, paralyzed, suffering great pain.”
Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.”
The centurion answered, saying, “Lord, I am not
worthy to have you enter under my roof. Just say a word, and my boy will be
healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. If I say
one word to this one—‘Go, ’ he goes, and if I tell another ‘Come,’ he comes. If
I tell my servant ‘Do this,’ he does it.
Hearing this, Jesus was amazed and said to those
following him, “Amen, the truth I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel
with such great power of trust. And I tell you, that many will come from the
east and from the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham and
Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of the heavens. But the sons of the kingdom will
be cast out into the darkness of [godforsaken] external existence, where there
will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”
And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go home. Let it be done to you as you have believed.”
And the boy was healed in that hour.
3rd
Epiphany
Matthew
8.1-13
At
a certain point in the life cycle of a plant, the carefully protected seeds are
ejected and separate from where they had been harbored. Without this
separation, there is no possibility of new life.
Lepers
were forced to the very edges of their community—despised and rejected. Yet
this individual leper in the gospel reading bears the seed of a new life. He takes
the initiative to find his way back into community again. He does so by
approaching the source of healing itself—Christ, who in turn reaches out to
touch him. Drawn by the World Physician the leper is integrated back into
community again.
We
are all outcasts in this life, feeling separated from all friends, relations
and the divine beings who live in the spiritual world. That is why Christ came
to us—because we could not enter the higher community. Now, because He has
come, and is here, we can help form together and enter the higher community
from here on earth. Christ heals the rift between soul and soul, spirit and
spirit, within and among us.
St.
Francis of
This is how our Lord
allowed me
to begin my healing:
While I yet walked
in sin, the mere sight
of lepers was as
a bitterness I could
not bear. Therefore
the Lord Himself drew
me to life
among them, and so
doing gave me
to have mercy on them.
By the time
I left them, the
bitterness had turned
to a sweetness of soul
and of body.[1]
Separation
is a phase of life. But as St. Francis says, through Christ’s healing in one’s
destiny, the bitterness becomes mercy and the sweetness of a new life for soul
and body.
