The outstretched hand: God’s power

<sA commentary on Mc 1, 40-45: Sunday, February 15th 2015
We read today the last part of Mark’s Chapter one, which we have been reading from the third Sunday to this sixth Sunday of ordinary time. On reflecting on this reading, that tells us about the experience of a leper healed by Jesus, after his private prayer, I would like to stress four points:

To acknowledge our own weaknesses and to reach out for help
The first thing that calls my attention in this story is that the leper –with a sickness considered at his time grave and a public disgrace– does not hide his reality; on the contrary, he acknowledges his sickness and his need to be helped out. He does not close himself up in bitter lowliness and despair; he comes out and decides to trust in himself, in his neighbour, in Jesus.
We certainly know that the first step to get healed is to accept that we are sick, not to deceive ourselves denying reality in sheer pride. The second step is to accept that we, by ourselves alone, are not able to overcome sickness or an addiction that is enslavering us, or any other situation of conflict. In our time, there’s much talk about self-esteem and self-help… That’s OK: each one of us, as a child of God, has his/her own dignity, talents, and resources…
But my experience is that self-esteem and self-help are not enough. In some moments, one has to know how to ask for help, how to reach out to somebody else, who can give us a needed material help, a good and clarifying word, a moral push… In that line we can understand the prayer of petition, that only the poor and humble understand. The rich and proud ones, of any type, do not ask for anything; they just command or pretend to. But if somebody considers himself/herself always rich, he or she is just lying, hiding his true reality. The leper’s prayer is typical of a humble person: “Lord, if you wish, you can heal me”.

The outstretched hand: God’s power
Confronted with the sincere leper’s prayer –a prayer made with the heart and the entire life, more than with words– Jesus stretches out his hand and touches him. “To stretch out the hand”, over situations and people, is a gesture that in the Bible is related to God’s saving power. It is done by Moses over the Red Sea, by the prophets over their disciples and heirs, by the Apostles over sick people and their successors. But we know that the real power of God is his love. Indeed, as Pope Benedict the XVIth said, “only love redeems”. Love as a gentle pat, love as an encouraging gesture, love as a bandage over a wound, love as a clear word, love as understanding and solidarity in its many ways.
In Jesus, this healing love of God becomes a concrete face, a look that encourages, a hand that touches and heals. Also the Church –community of missionary disciples, extension of Jesus in Today’s history– becomes an outstretched hand to touch the sick, the feeble, the humiliated… a hand that touches and accompanies the voice that says: Do not be afraid, courage, “be healed”. Certainly, sickness is a part of every human experience, a part that cannot be avoided, but the worst of it is the feeling of being valueless, a kind of “nobody”, a useless individual. It is there that the hand of Jesus, the hand of the Church, in the name of Jesus, touches sus and says: Do not be afraid, your are most valuable in the eyes of God, your Father.

To be re-integrated into community’s life
Jesus commands the healed leper to go and present himself to the community leaders and perform the necessary rites to his re-integration. Those rites are quite simple –and we could disagree on its isolated worth– but together they help to keep the community united.
I remember, from my times as a missionary in Ghana, when a lady accused of sorcery was taken to me. After performing some rites and a long dialogue with the community, I went with her to the place where she was living. There I realized what the real problem was: she was a kind of a “leper”, in the sense that she was isolated from the community in so many ways. So the solution was somehow to “push” her to re-incorporate into the community’s life: feasts, rites, works, joys, sorrows, even fights.
Many of us need from time to time an spiritual push to humbly re-integrate ourselves again into our community: family, group, Christian community, parish, Church. To achieve this we need Jesus hand and word, which we can have in many places, especially in the Eucharist.

The messianic secret
Jesus commands the leper to keep silence on what has happened. He is enforcing the famous “messianic secret” to, according to the experts, protect himself from a false (political or triumphalist) interpretation of his mission.
I think that in our times, quite often, we are too much worried about our presence in the Means of Social Communication. Jesus shows us another way: the way of authenticity, of truth an transparency. If then the Media spread the news, we shall see how to react, but to look for publicity at any cost… does not seem to be the Jesus’ method.

Fr. Antonio Villarino
Rome