– Brought to you by Fr. Bernardino Andrade (bernardinodandrade@gmail.com)
In the New Testament there is no disease regarded with more terror and pity than leprosy. When Jesus sent out the twelve, He commanded them: «Heal the sick, cleanse lepers». Leprosy was a very special disease among all other diseases. The most painful, the most humiliating and the most repugnant. No other disease reduces a human being for so many years to so hideous a wreck.
Lepers had to live separate from society. They could not attend the religious services in the synagogue, could not enter the temple, could not approach anybody… There were so many rules that were supposed to keep them outcasts and treated like outcasts. They were «unclean». They could not touch or be touched. Any person who touched them would become unclean.
In the Gospel of Mark, chapter 1, a leper came to Jesus and asked Jesus to heal him. If Jesus wanted to heal him it would be so easy to say «be healed». But Jesus proposedly broke the law. The «Gospel says that Jesus «stretch-out his hand and touched him». This was the moment that I am pretty sure that all people present gasped and asked him: «Are you crazy, Jesus? Do you know what you are? You just became unclean. Like the leper».
I am pretty sure that people started talking with each other saying things like «I thought he was smarter. Now he is unclean like the leper who is a sinner. If that leper was not a sinner for sure he wouldn’t get leprosy. Jesus, who looks such a nice person and a smart person revealed his ignorance and his stupidity. He voluntarily became unclean like the leper. This is crazy».
What a confusion. I would’ve loved to be in the middle of that confusion. I would’ve loved to become unclean for the same reason. For touching the untouchable. And I think we all are called to touch the untouchable and become unclean. But on my part I am too coward to act like Jesus and take the risks Jesus took. When people say that Jesus died innocent I always feel this strange reaction. «No! He was not innocent. He broke many laws and one of them was to touch the untouchable. According to the law he was a criminal and for that reason they felt he deserved to die like a criminal».
I wish I could die for the reasons Jesus died. But I am too coward to get involved in the things Jesus was involved in. I prefer to be «entertained» by a religious service on Sunday, take part in a few processions, pray a few rosaries than to be involved in the work and project of an «insane» Jesus who says that we are all children of the same father, that we are brothers and sisters and that the world belongs to every human being. I am smarter than Jesus. I know better. I am not that crazy.
2 – Who are today’s lepers? Who are the untouchable?
They are around us. They live in our streets. They worship at our churches. These include homosexuals, AIDS victims, the homeless, alcoholics, drug-addicts, and marginalized groups – the divorced, the unmarried-single mothers, priests who left the priesthood, migrant workers and the mentally ill. God’s loving and motherly hand must reach out to them through us.
Jesus wants us to touch their lives even at the risk of becoming unclean. Having a cup of coffee with a homosexual you take the risk of being labeled like one of them. You take the risk of being alienated like them. You take the risk of, like Jesus, becoming unclean. Having a cup of coffee with a homeless person you take the risk of being labeled like a person of low class.
You take the risk of being ridiculed even by your friends. You take the risk of becoming ostracized by people in your church and getting a bad reputation. You take the risk of becoming unclean. But Jesus is a fascinating person. I invite all of you to join me and to feel like Jesus, to dream like Jesus, to talk like Jesus, to heal like Jesus and to follow Jesus until the last consequences. To follow Jesus is not always easy but it is always safe.
Today when we celebrate the World Day of the Sick, I would like to give a special blessing to one of those «lepers» who stands every Sunday, begging, at the door of our Chapel before Mass. I plan to ask him inside for a special blessing. I don’t know if he will accept. He is António (true name) and, for many years, he has belonged to the group of the homeless. He never sleeps in the same bench or the same drive way, or under the same tree. But I believe that he begs always in the same places, especially at the door of Penha de França Chapel. He knows where the good people are. In general they are the church goers.
Love and Peace and Laughter,
Fr. Bernardino Andrade