A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark (Mk 1:40-45)
A leper came to him and kneeling down begged him and said, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched the leper, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.” The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean. Then, warning him sternly, he dismissed him at once. Then he said to him, “See that you tell no one anything, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them.”
Showing deep compassion for the leper, Jesus reaches out to touch him. By going where no one else goes, Jesus hears the plea of the leper, spoken in humility and absolute trust: “If you wish, you can make me clean.” By divine authority, Jesus cures the leper immediately, a miracle he warns the leper not to share with anyone. Instead, Jesus tells him to be obedient to Jewish law by showing himself to the priest and offering appropriate sacrifices. Not ready to reveal his messianic identity, Jesus goes off to deserted places. But “people kept coming to him from everywhere.”
God, help me follow the example of faith and humility the leper demonstrates. He trusted completely in your mercy and recognized your divine power to restore his physical well-being. In the first line of today’s Gospel, Mark tells us that the leper came to Jesus, kneeling down and begging him. To no person or power on earth should anyone beg as the leper begged. Only before you, Lord, as the magi did at your birth, should all people fall to their knees. This is why the leper is a superb witness to our faith. From Psalm 86: “All the nations you have made shall come and bow down before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name.” When I veer today toward ungodly self-reliance, give me the grace to call to mind the scene of the leper approaching your Son Jesus Christ. Be merciful and draw me back, close to you, every moment of this day.
From the responsorial psalm: “Why do you hide your face, forgetting our woe and our oppression? For our souls are bowed down to the dust, our bodies are pressed to the earth. Redeem us, Lord, because of your mercy.”
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.