Imagine what life would be like if we were never touched by
another human being.
The leper in this week’s Gospel asks to be made clean, not simply to be cured of
his disease, but to be restored to relationship with the community that has
ostracized him, the community that will not come near him for fear of impurity. Jesus is moved with pity – in Greek, splanchnizesthai, a visceral reaction of compassion for the
man, accompanied by a desire to help him.
Filled with love for this man made vulnerable by a disease of the flesh,
Jesus touches him, incurring ritual impurity
in order to restore the man to relationship, uniting with him in a gesture of
complete acceptance and love.
We too are called to reach across barriers, to open ourselves in love to
one another, to allow ourselves to be vulnerable, because it is our very vulnerability that makes community possible.
Loving another makes us vulnerable, yet we are called to love, to be
Christ for one another in the way we love one another, to bring others out of
isolation, back into community, by our love for them.
Jesus’ touch restored life. St.
Paul says, Be imitators of me, as I am of
Christ. Our embrace of Other, in
imitation of Jesus’ splanchnizethai, is
an embrace of our essential humanity, a conscious sharing of compassion that
speaks to the very essence of community and love.
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