1. -- Lanie LeBlanc OP
2. -- Carol & Dennis Keller
3. -- Brian Gleeson CP
4. -- Paul O'Reilly SJ
5. --(Your reflection can be here!)
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1.
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Sun. 6 B 2021
The difference in the care of a leper in the first and third
readings is astonishing. Both are essential and important.
The first was out of necessity to protect the people while
the second was a more compassionate act to restore a
particular person to society.
What really grabbed hold of me though was how the leper
spoke to Jesus. The leper begged Jesus. He said, "If you
wish, you can............ "
It seems to me that each of us has some problem that we
would beg Jesus to "fix" for us if we met him. In fact, we
might have a longer list than we would like to admit. We
might think, "if only Jesus would....., then ...."
Maybe the list or even the most profound request is really
not personally about us, but about people or situations that
are dear to us. I fall into that category easily. I often
say that Jesus definitely knows the names of those I love.
But what about me and my personal needs and you and your
personal needs? What needs to be healed so that cleansed,
we, as individuals, would proclaim the glory of God
unabashedly to everyone everywhere as did the cleansed
person in the Gospel? Asking Jesus's help to figure that out
would be an excellent preparation for Lent which, by the
way, is coming up sooner than we think.
Blessings,
Dr. Lanie LeBlanc OP
Southern Dominican Laity
lanie@leblanc.one
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2.
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Sixth Sunday of Ordered Time February 14, 2021
Leviticus
13:1-2 7 44-46; Responsorial Psalm 32; 1st Corinthians
10:31v- 11:1; Gospel Acclamation Luke 7:16; Mark 1:40-45
There is an
apparent difference for the lepers in the first reading from
Leviticus with the outcome for the leper in the Gospel of
Mark. Leviticus required that anyone with a skin disease –
including leprosy – must be declared unfit to live in
community. Lepers were charged with shouting out their
condition to all passersby so that any contact would be
avoided. In Mark’s gospel Jesus encounters a leper living on
the margins and heals him. He sends him to the priests as
required by Leviticus. It is the priests who were
responsible to judge whether a person could return to
society. Leprosy, any skin disease, was a threat to the
community because it was considered as contagious as we now
consider Covid 19. In order to protect the community,
affected persons were removed from family, from
neighborhoods, from civil society, and would lose all rights
and accesses of citizenship. They could not work for a
living and had to depend on charity for nourishment and
clothing. With Covid 19 we understand the need for
quarantine to prevent spread. Since there was no cure for
leprosy, a leper would be cut off from all contact except
with other lepers and would die alone. While Leviticus
focused on removing an individual from society, Mark’s
narrative of Jesus and the leper teach of healing that leads
to a return to active participation in community. This is
the nature of all of Jesus’ healing and freeing miracles.
Each one allowed for the return of the individual to
community.
The scene in Mark’s gospel tells us this diseased man is
cured not only of his disease but also of his isolation.
Jesus insists the man follow the law of Moses and show
himself to the priests for examination. But the man could
not contain his joy. He likely leaped into the air, must
have shouted – “I’m healed, I’m no longer unclean! Welcome
me back into our community, let me share at your feasts, let
me work alongside you, let me share in your joys and your
sorrows. I am healed. I can live with you again. Welcome
me!”
During our terrible pandemic there are compelling concerns
for the health safety of family, for those who are health
challenged, for the aged among us. Those of us who care
about community, hope for and work for the good of others
wear masks, socially distance ourselves, and engage in
frequent ritual washings. It is not a political matter that
we wear face masks. Doing so protects others in our
communities. It provides protection for us: protection from
droplets containing virus. We distance ourselves from
friends, family, fellow-workers, fellow citizens so as to
encourage the virus to its death by limiting its potential
victims. The motivation for this self-isolation is as
protection for the community. Our isolation separates us
from community. This isolation gnaws on our spirits. We can
understand the joy of the leper cured at his release from
isolation.
In these two stories, the focus is that we each need
community. It seems we are hardwired to finding a place in
community where we can be full participants. That is the
point of the Leviticus and of Mark’s gospel this Sunday. For
centuries, our Church focused its energies, its conscience,
and prayer life on a privatized spirituality. The focus has
been on Me and Jesus. Our goal was not this world, but a
looking forward to the shadowy world that was to come after
we passed to another existence. The goal of our spiritual
efforts was to be caught by death in the state of grace. In
that way we would have a place in eternity, sharing in a
reborn paradise long ago lost by pre-historic parents of the
human race. Conversion was all about a change in my life
that removed barriers to a full relationship with God. As we
grew old, that change often moved more and more into a
denial of the world in the hopes of eternity. In that
spirituality the material world was viewed as being in
conflict with the spiritual world. There was a divide
between ordinary life and spiritual life. Material life had
to be controlled, manipulated by the spiritual life as
something base and a stumbling block to the spiritual. The
spiritual life was always looking for evil and in doing so
often overlooked the wonder and beauty of God’s creation.
Such a spirituality overlooked the presence of God in his
marvelous creation. We lost in such a spirituality the
ability of creation to reflect God’s continual and abiding
presence. We tended to look at the material world and its
beauty and its pleasures as lepers among us. Other people
were shunned because they held the potential of misleading
us into sin. Others were lepers with the power to corrupt
us, to rob us of our chances of getting past St. Peter at
the golden gate. So, we avoided, said no to God’s creation.
Some even misused creation and people. If nature and others
were the source of temptation, then abused nature and people
it did not matter. There is more to spiritual life than sin
and its avoidance. There are attitudes and activities that
bring life to fullness.
A thoughtful look at the first chapters of the book of
Genesis portray for us four distinct statements about sin.
First is Adam and Eve’s transgression which separates them
from God and moves them from a glorious paradise, a full
appreciation and enjoyment of God’s creation, into a
difficult world where nature is in conflict and a threat to
humanity. The second narrative is the murder of Abel by Cain
brought on by jealousy and envy. If another has more than I
the solution is violence toward the other. The third story
is the lack of order and purpose that came with God’s
creative hand. When God’s presence is rejected then the
chaos of the waters before God placed them in order, that
chaos and destruction returned. The destruction is complete
except for those who see clearly. Their community, their
family is saved. The fourth and final story of sin is a
story about the Tower of Babel. When technology, when
engineering, when humanity believes it can solve everything
through science and technology, it forgets the need to
relate to others and to the Creator. Those people believe
they have control of their fate and are at the top of
creation, needing nothing but their wits, intelligence, and
science. They become so certain of themselves that they no
longer need community. They discover they no longer
understand each other. And in their fear of the other they
spread throughout the world. Their conversations no longer
convey but are nothing more than a babble without meaning.
Arrogance and pride created a tower, a monument to their
lack of community. All four sins created division within
God’s creation. What God had declared “very good” on the
sixth day of creation turns into slop, sludge, violence. In
isolation, mistrust, and any sense of the common welfare of
each is lost. The wonder and magnificence of each person is
slathered over with insignificance. Death of the other is
unmoving. Pain of the other is the problem only for the
other. Community is dead. Forgotten are the words of the
Creator: “Let us create man in our image and likeness. Male
and female he created them.” With the loss of community, the
world itself lost the particular and individual image of the
Creator. And in its newfound isolation hatred and distrust
and violence became the gods worshipped.
When the nation of Israel was freed from the Pharaoh and
began those forty years of wandering, that people were
formed into a nation. What was unique of this nation among
all the nations of the world was simply that this people’s
faith taught them that God is present always and everywhere.
No other nation held such a belief. For those other nations,
their gods were on Mount Olympus, removed from the day to
day living of the people. During those long and difficult
days in the desert, Moses worked with the present God to
form a nation. The clans, the loosely connected tribes
descended from the twelve brothers, did not have a whole lot
in common until they began their migration to a land
promised. King David became the high point of that nation,
completing its nation building. His son Solomon was a great
builder and fostered pride in the elite while taxing and
conscripting the non-elite into near servitude. Solomon’s
son was so bad that the nation split into two, a northern
and a southern kingdom. It was during the southern Kingdom’s
exile in Babylon that there came a longing for something
more. It was during this time that the prophets spoke and
wrote about one promised who would call back together the
scattered twelve tribes, returning all to the city Jerusalem
whose name means city of peace. Unity, community, common
cause, common good – these were the goals of the Messiah.
Then came a preacher – a prophet after an absence of four
hundred years of prophecy. He dressed like the revered
prophet Elijah: he preached on the banks of the Jordan river
where Elijah disappeared in a fiery chariot into the
heavens. What did he say? What did he do? He shouted to the
people a simple message – well simple perhaps because all
that is recorded is his statement that the Kingdom of God
was at hand After millions of years of human life, of life
lived in the shadows of Adam and Eve, of Cain’s murder of
Abel, of the chaos from which Noah and family were saved,
and loss of understanding because of tongues twisted by
pride and ears plugged by arrogance: after so many years of
violence and war, of theft and murder, of idolatry and
sacrifice of first born sons to the dark god Moloch – after
all that comes John the Baptizer. And his message is one of
hope – one of a call to pay attention. The One who followed
John would overcome all obstacles. And humanity and the
earth would be renewed. Once again, the community of mankind
would become a great Kingdom, a thriving and flourishing
community. Leprosy, blindness, deafness, misshapen limbs,
addictions – all these would be healed, and all individuals
would be called again to became what they were created to be
– a community of life.
So, what is the leprosy that keeps us from becoming the
Kingdom of God? We should think of these two readings about
leprosy in those terms. What are the diseases that keep us
apart and participants in the kingdom of darkness? What is
it that keeps us from growing the Kingdom of God to take the
world back from the evil course begun in those sins
described in Genesis? How about racism? How about the
violence of war and failure to accept and respect the alien
who is in our midst? How about small mindedness that
excludes others? How about the misuse of natural resources
to the detriment of third world nations? How about the
enslavement of the poor in meaningless and sub-living wages?
How about the absence of affordable health care for all? How
about accepting lies and spin of truth because it fits our
thinking? How about competition that seeks to eliminate the
livelihood of others? How about…. Well, the list goes on and
on.
In all Jesus’ work, he only confronts those who think
themselves better than all others. He deals with all persons
who seek him because of his mercy and compassion. He is our
model. When we forget mercy and compassion in favor of
judgment and condemnation, when we think ourselves better
than anyone else, then we are like the Pharisees, the
Sadducees, and the chief priests. It is obvious in the
gospels who chose not to repent and seek the Kingdom of God.
We are Church, a community of respect, of sharing, of
welcome, of hope, of faith in God present, and of binding
love that overcomes all that divides us one from the other.
We are Church when we believe in the supreme worth of every
person no matter their color, their nation of origin, their
economic status, their educational achievements, their work,
and even their faith tradition. God is creator of us all –
no one is created who is lacking the image and likeness of
that God. Let us remove the divisiveness of leprosy no
matter what form it takes in our minds, in our hearts!
We are headed for Lent this coming Wednesday. We should
begin our focus on creating the Kingdom of God in this year.
Carol & Dennis Keller
dkeller002@nc.rr.com
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3.
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OUTSIDERS BECOMING INSIDERS: 6TH SUNDAY B
What kind
of people do we tend to despise and reject?
I guess some of
you will have seen the movie ‘Shine’ starring Geoffrey Rush.
It tells the amazing story of the successful concert
pianist, David Helfgott. Early on, as he improves his piano
playing, he also falls into a serious mental illness and
starts to disintegrate as a person. He is suffering from
manic depression, and his moods swing from the bright
heights of elation, joy, and excitement, to the black depths
of sadness, loneliness, and despair. Very soon he loses his
job, his home, and his family, and is placed in a mental
hospital. His psychiatrist there even bans him from playing
the piano. He ends up feeling rejected, isolated and
abandoned, worthless and hopeless.
One day a woman called Gillian comes to visit one of the
other patients at the hospital. A long-time fan of his
music, she sees David mooching around and recognizes him.
She says in the movie, ‘at once I knew what the rest of my
life would be about’. She takes him into her home, looks
after him as one of the family, and takes on the
responsibility for his recovery. Bit by bit he gets better,
and with the help of medicines, he starts to control his
mood swings. Most importantly to them both, he returns to
playing the piano. Soon he is back on the concert stage, and
his performances to exuberant and enthusiastic audiences are
a personal triumph.
Of course, ‘Shine’ is only a film. But its story is true. It
happened. It happened through the providence of God and the
love of a good woman. It’s a story too that is still
happening, because David Helfgott continues to enchant
concert audiences.
That story is an extension of the message of Jesus in the
Word of God today, which is about accepting and welcoming
the broken, the despised, the rejected, the odd bods, the
misfits, and the outcasts, into our company and community,
and offering them help and healing through our openness and
generosity. In fact, Jesus challenges us to go out of our
way to accept outsiders and outcasts in the way that he put
himself out, to befriend that poor leper of our gospel
story.
As a leper, the man was barred from going to the temple. He
was not allowed to associate with others in any way. He was
not allowed to even see his family or friends. If anyone
came anywhere close, he had to warn them by shouting out,
‘Unclean!’ ‘Unclean!’
Since today we don’t usually run into anyone with physical
leprosy (Hansen’s disease), we might identify at least some
of those who are often treated as social lepers. Whom might
we include? Let me suggest the following: - Persons with
AIDS; alcoholics; drug addicts; mentally Ill persons;
neurotics; persons with obsessions; the very obese; the odd
dressers; Gays and Lesbians; the handicapped; and the
homeless. At times the outcasts of society even include the
elderly; persons with dementia; teenagers; Immigrants;
refugees; asylum seekers; and those who speak foreign
languages. We can work out whom we would consider outcasts
by asking ourselves: Whom do we judge as not being our kind
of people? Whom would we avoid? Whom would we not want to be
seen with or mix with? Whom would we leave off our
invitations to parties?
By contrast, it was said of Jesus, that great mixer with all
kinds of people - high and low, rich and poor, successful or
drop-outs, influential or ordinary: ‘This man welcomes
outcasts and (even) eats with them.’ Often, it was his
sharing with them, his communion with them, that led them to
better ways of being and better ways of living. Think, for
example, of Zacchaeus, the tax collector, and how he turned
around his life through contact with Jesus!
The care, kindness, welcome, compassion, generosity, and
healing touch of Jesus towards outsiders, come through
loudly and clearly in all the details of today’s story of
his meeting with the leper. He not only healed the man of
his hideous and embarrassing skin disease, but he also
healed him of his social isolation. by returning him as a
changed man, to the company of his friends, family, and
community.
Today Jesus is challenging me to rethink and alter my
attitudes, my judgments, and my behaviour, towards all kinds
of people out there who are different. What about you? Where
do you stand?
"Brian Gleeson CP" <bgleesoncp@gmail.com>
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4.
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Year B: 6th Sunday of Ordinary Time
“A leper
came to Jesus and pleaded on his knees: ‘If you want to’ he
said ‘you can cure me.’ Feeling sorry for him, Jesus
stretched out his hand and touched him. ‘Of course I want
to!’ he said. ‘Be cured!’”
I hope this will
not seem disrespectful, but do you ever wonder what it must
have felt like to be Jesus?
- to have the power to heal people just by touching them...
“Do you feel sick?” – I touch you – and immediately you get
better. No fuss, no bother, no drugs, no injections, no
side-effects, no operations, no clinical commissioning
groups, no Health & Social Care Bills – you just get better
right away. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing to be able to
do for people?
I often wonder that because, during the week I work as a
doctor. And, in my own little way, I try to heal people too.
But I’m not as good as Jesus. Quite often when people come
to see me, I don’t know straight away what’s wrong with them
and I have to send them away for tests that are complicated
and painful and not always accurate. And when it comes to
trying to make people better, I need to use tablets and
medicines and send people to have operations. And my
medicines don’t always work. And they can have bad effects
as well as good ones. And the surgeons who do the operations
have to be “cruel to be kind” - they have to hurt people in
order to help them. It’s very hard to cut out the bad part
of a person without hurting the rest of the person. But
Jesus doesn’t have to do any of that – he just touches
people and immediately they get better. Wouldn’t it be great
to be like that –to be able to heal people by just touching
them.
And the person who made me think that the most I shall call
Tessa. You see, the best feeling I’ve ever had in my life
was making Tessa see again.
When I first met her, Tessa was a 14-year old girl who had
just come into our remote mission hospital in the Amazon
with a very serious and very rare infection of the brain
called cavernous sinus thrombosis.
That’s when an infection gets into the blood vessels right
inside the brain and it cuts off the blood supply to the
eyes. And often people who get it die because it’s a very
serious infection. And even if they don’t die, they are
seriously and permanently brain damaged.
Well, we managed to stop Tessa from dying. But she was
completely blind. And we were all afraid that this would be
permanent. According to the books we looked up, once this
happens, it usually is permanent. But we put her on all the
treatment we could think of and hoped for the best. And for
once, the best happened. Almost miraculously, she began to
recover and every day, when I went to see her on the ward
round, she would be able to see just a little better. Until,
after about six weeks, her sight was almost completely back
to normal. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so proud of myself.
So one day on
the big weekly grand ward round, with all the doctors
and nurses and students standing round, I asked her how
it felt to be able to see again when all of us had
thought she was going to be blind for life.
She thought for a little while and then she said she
felt a bit sorry.
“Sorry?!!
How do you mean ‘Sorry’?!!”
Surprised – and a little disappointed – and rather
regretting having asked the question in public - I asked
her why?
She said – because she wanted people to go on treating
her like they had when she was blind.
She explained – when she was blind, whenever people came
to her, they would touch her – just to let her know they
were there. And they would touch her with great
gentleness and love. That hadn’t happened to her before.
And she liked that. And now that she could see again,
she didn’t want them to stop doing that.
I learned from
that – I hope. I learned that it was not I who had healed
her at all. Certainly, I had used my medicines to fight the
infection and stop her from dying and even get her sight
back. But the people who had healed her were all those
people who had come to see her and had touched her with
love. And to her, that was more important even than getting
back her sight.
So I learned from that it isn’t just Jesus who can heal
people simply by touching them. All of us have that power
vested in us – if we touch them the way that Jesus touched
them. Let us pray that we may all recognise the power of
Jesus’ touch and let us pray that we may all use it well.
Let us stand and profess our Faith in God who has touched us
all with His Love and who uses us to heal.
Paul O'Reilly <fatbaldnproud@opalityone.net>
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5.
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