Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark 1, 40 – 45
A leper came to him and kneeling down begged him and said,
“If you wish, you can make me clean.”
Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand,
touched the leper, and said to him,
“I do will it. Be made clean.”
The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean.
Then, warning him sternly, he dismissed him at once.
Then he said to him, “See that you tell no one anything,
but go, show yourself to the priest
and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed;
that will be proof for them.”
The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter.
He spread the report abroad
so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly.
He remained outside in deserted places,
and people kept coming to him from everywhere.
Leprosy
1) A leper: What a lot of “lepers of life” we can meet nowadays! You can even be one of them. Let’s consider the following characteristics:
a) Isolated: You do not interact with anyone because of shame or fear; fear of being rejected or left aside; shame of being considered ‘different’. So, you shut yourself up inside yourself and become hard.
b) Bad smell: The rottenness that you have within you may impregnate others. By this I’m referring to the fact that you may be filled with so much hatred and anger that you start to speak ill of everyone or cast negative comments about everything, or simply become a bird of ill omen.
c) Injured skin: By this I mean being over-sensitive to everything and on the defensive. You feel that whoever approaches you can hurt you.
2) Jesus heals: The Lord is willing to heal you, but He needs you to work on humility and simplicity. A deep spiritual life is a great relief in your daily living and may give you the answer to many situations and blows that come your way. Ask Jesus to heal you.
3) Prudence: Be cautious in your actions because you can hinder the work of God in many people. We must all think seriously about this because imprudence appears in many places and different situations. Be careful of what you publish on social networks, even on your WhatsApp status, because it may have an influence on others and can even have the opposite effect to what you intended. Check if you are being prudent as regards what you say and what you publish, because you may end up causing this spiritual leprosy that I described above, in those around you.
God bless you in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Always remember that something good is on the way!
