Slideshow image

During our Wednesday prayer meeting, Fr. Art brought up something that made me reflect more deeply.
As he was checking commentaries on Matthew chapters 9 and 10, the Gospel passages describing Jesus commissioning his disciples, many of them mentioned that Jesus’ healing the lepers are miracles we cannot fully understand. Certainly, that is why they are called miracles. But how are we to understand Jesus’ healing miracles, and why do we not seem to witness them in the same way today?

As I reflected on this, I thought of St. Francis. When Francis dedicated himself to following God’s call, he opened the Gospel three times, and one of those passages was from Matthew, the same Gospel we will hear this coming Sunday, along with similar passages from the other synoptic Gospels. He took those words quite literally, selling everything he owned and setting out to proclaim the Good News.

One of the ministries he embraced was caring for those with leprosy. In Francis’s time, as in Jesus’ time, leprosy was incurable. Because of the way it manifested in the body, having the disease was not only a physical death sentence but also a social one. Yet Francis served those who suffered from it and chose to be friends with them. Before his conversion, he had felt disgust and fear toward people with leprosy, but afterward, he embraced them quite literally. Although some legends recount miraculous healings attributed to Francis, it is unlikely that he cured every person of the disease.

However, I am confident that every person with leprosy who encountered Francis experienced a different kind of healing; one of the mind, heart, and soul. They were treated as human persons. They were seen, heard, cared for, and loved as they were. In that encounter, they likely rediscovered hope, peace, and joy through the restoration of their dignity and their relationships with others.

When we look around today, we see many people struggling with various physical and mental illnesses. Others suffer from social or economic marginalization. We may not be able to solve every problem or perform miraculous cures as we might wish. Nevertheless, we can still become instruments of God’s grace. We can bring a kind of miracle to those who are rarely treated with kindness and respect, to those whose dignity has been wounded by prejudice and indifference.

Who are the “lepers” in our society today? Who are they in your own life? And what can we offer to help restore their human dignity?

Fr. James