The Exam

 

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Year B

Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46; Psalm 32:1-2, 5, 11; 1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1; Mark 1:40-45

He shall be brought to… the priest.
Leviticus 13:2

Can there be any doubt as to why the Law was completely incapable of being the means of salvation in light of today’s first reading?  Think about it- put yourself in the place of a leper in that time.  You had to be physically ostracized while you were slowly and painfully dying.  If you were in public you had to cry out, “Unclean, unclean,” so that others could get away from you.  Perhaps some may see parallels to the current situation, but it was so much worse than that.  What’s more, this all came about because God said it should be done this way.  A leper in the Old Testament very much felt the abandonment of both people and God.

Why was it so?  Perhaps because of the very primitive understanding of medicine and that the only way to keep such a plague from wiping out the entire race was by such extreme means.  But one begins to sense something else taking place as well.  It isn’t hard to see that leprosy stands in for sin.  What leprosy does to the person, or the community, physically sin does spiritually.

Now flash forward to today’s Gospel reading.  Jesus encounters a leper.  Rather than follow protocol, the leper seeks out Jesus because he believes Jesus can heal him.  He’s right.  But watch the way that Jesus chooses to heal him.  Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, 
touched him, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.”  Did you see it?  The leper was supposed to avoid touching anyone or allowing himself to be touched.  The Law stated that anyone touched by someone or something unclean became unclean themselves.  But in this case it’s reversed.  Rather than Jesus becoming unclean the man becomes clean. 

But note that in both Leviticus and the Gospel the process culminates with a visit to the priest.  It was the priest who was to examine the individual to declare him either unclean or clean.  Now, here’s the interesting part.  The Law was specific about the process for declaring someone unclean.  This happened frequently.  It was equally clear about the process for declaring someone clean.  We don’t have any recorded cases of this actually happening.  It may have.  But it would have been rare.  Only in this case with Jesus would the priest actually be seeing a time when he could declare someone who was unclean to be clean.  God made provision in the Law for something that would not happen for thousands of years until Jesus came.

It’s this idea of going to see the priest that I want to key in on.  Keeping in mind that in the Bible leprosy stands in for sin, the application should be obvious.  We are in need of regularly seeking out our priests to be examined so that we can be made clean.  This is what the Church offers us in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, or what is more popularly known as Confession.

The Catholic Church teaches that the priest is made in persona Christi- in the person of Christ- at his ordination.  As such, he carries Christ’s authority when he does certain things such as say the words of institution at Mass, thus bringing about the Body and Blood of Christ, as well as announcing the forgiveness of our sins in confession.  When we go to tell the priest our sins we are telling Jesus.  When the priest gives us counsel we should receive it as from Jesus.  And when he pronounces our sins are forgiven Jesus is saying that through him. 

For confession to be all it is intended to be the person must take some time to prayerfully examine himself to see where he has sinned.  Then he must bare his soul to the priest who is like a spiritual physician and will give him some thoughts and advice to help in his ongoing battle with sin.  But such an examination need not wait until we are receiving the sacrament.

St. Ignatius of Loyola had as a key part of the spirituality he taught the regular, daily, examination of one’s own soul.  Each night one lays himself bare before God to evaluate where he experienced God’s grace and triumphed, or where he failed and fell into sin.  Then he confesses his sins to God and asks for the mercy of forgiveness and the grace to do better the next day.  This daily examination kept one close to God and enabled him to find victory over sin. 

Let’s return to the Gospel.  Jesus tells the man healed of leprosy to go show himself to the priest.  What’s ironic is that he has already done so since Jesus is the great High Priest.  While going to a priest in confession is helpful, and even necessary in some cases, we have the opportunity to go to Jesus each day and allow Him to examine us so that we can be made clean.  The problem is that we too often want to hide our sins… as if our Lord does not already know all about them.  We are only fooling ourselves; and we do so to our own detriment.

Socrates is credited with saying, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  We would heartily agree.  God does not intend that we should do so.  Rather, He invites us to come to Him often so that we may be examined and we may be healed.

Dear friends, we are on the cusp of Lent when our minds naturally turn to such things.  Why wait?  Let us be diligent today to find a place where we may lay ourselves bare before our great High Priest, our Lord Jesus Christ.  There, let us tell Him all.  He is willing that we should be clean.  Let Him touch you… and be made whole.