Separated From You, Let Me Never Be

Hello Friends,

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is moved to compassion by the suffering of a leper. To prepare us for the scene from the Gospel of Mark, the Church gives us an essential complimentary first reading from the Old Testament. In the first reading from Leviticus, we are told what it meant to be a leper for a first-century Jew. We are reminded that a person with leprosy was considered ritually unclean and was forced to live in perpetual isolation outside of the community. For the Jews of this time, ritually clean and unclean was a serious matter. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is going to shock the Jewish witnesses to this event when he touches the unclean but remains untainted. Jesus, moved by pity and compassion for an isolated soul, will heal so that the healing can be certified as prescribed by Jewish law, and this former outcast will be allowed to rejoin the community.
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We learn that the leper approaches Jesus, kneeling humbly, and does not ask to be healed but to “make me clean.” The weight of isolation that the leper was experiencing must have been more painful than the physical effects of the leprosy. To remove the stain of unclean is what the leper desired most. Sin can affect us in a similar way and cause us to become distant from God. In the Sacrament of Confession, we too, through the infinite mercy of God, can receive that relief that the leper felt when Jesus said, “I do will it. Be made clean”. This scene occurs early in the Gospel of Mark, but we can see the symbolism of the beginning of Jesus’s redemptive mission in this miracle of curing the leper. In the Sacrament of Confession, we also come humbly and contrite of heart to ask our Lord to reconcile us to God and keep us in communion with his Church. Jesus never fails to renew us and feed our ongoing conversion. When we strive to change our minds and to live how Jesus is calling us, we move along on our path of conversion. Conversion is our lifelong endeavor, and the Church that Jesus founded gives us the path to be continually renewed. 

We will enter Lent next Wednesday, and as we prepare to renew our baptismal commitment, let us seek that inner conversion of the heart to follow Christ more faithfully. The season of Lent is the perfect time to embrace the gift of the Sacrament of Confession so that
we are never distant from God. “The whole power of Penance consists in restoring us to God’s grace and joining us with him in intimate friendship” (CC1468).



Manuel Leon
​Business Manager 

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