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Homilies are posted no later than during the week
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6 Ordinary Time
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Sixth
Sunday in Ordinary Time - Cycle B - Mark 1:40-45
President John F Kennedy invited a bishop to give an
invocation. The prayer was endless. Later, a smiling President Kennedy
asked a guest, "Did you hear that bishop's speech to God?"
There is irony in today's Gospel. Jesus tells the
cured man to tell no one of the miracle. The fellow cannot contain
himself. He tells everyone. Yet in Matthew 28,19, Jesus tells us to
tell everyone about Him. What do we do? That's right. We tell no one.
We should bring back the former leper. He was a better public relations
person than we. Or we should become like the bishop.
As the scene opens, Jesus is walking out of
the Galilean
mountains. He has delivered His famous sermon on the Beatitudes. He is
about to take off the academic gown and hood of the scholar and put on
the mantle of the miracle worker. Though Mark's Gospel is the shortest,
it contains the most miracles.
Christ was being followed by a huge mob. As He
approached a
town, a desperate man broke through the crowd and painfully got to his
knees before Jesus. The crowd ran away in horror. The fellow was our
unnamed leper.
Leprosy was a common disease in Palestine. In
its late stages, the illness is a bad scene. Substitute foul smelling
sores for nose, lips, toes, etc, and one has the picture. The
Jews looked upon leprosy not so much as a physical disease but a
spiritual uncleanness. The leper carried both physical wounds and the
conviction that God hated him. Talk about poor self-image!
Jewish law was harsh to lepers. They had to
live outside towns. If they came upon a clean person, they had to ring
a bell and shout, "Leper, leper." The historian Josephus wrote they
"were, in effect, dead men."
Imagine the courage of this fellow! The law
stated if a leper exposed others to his disease, he was to be stoned to
death. Lucky for him that the people around the Teacher were so anxious
to get away from the scene. Otherwise they might have well stoned him
to death. Would Jesus have put Himself between them and the stones?
With you, I answer yes.
A question rises. How did the leper sense that
the Christ would not flee in revulsion with everyone else? What quality
did he discern in Him that told him Jesus would hold His ground?
Mark here is telling us much about Jesus. He
signals us He was most approachable. We discover He has time for those
whom others consider human garbage. One hears people say, "My sin is so
horrible not even God could forgive it." This Gospel gives the lie to
such a statement. The mystics tell us God will forgive us not because
of who we are but because of who He is.
"If you want to, you can cure me." The leper's
gut plea is
couched in just eight words. People in pain do not speak in
pages. They have time only for the essentials.
Today's account tells us that the Teacher cured the
fellow before Him and touched his running sores. Can anyone here
imagine what that stroking must have felt like to the leper? Probably
it was the first time in years that someone who was clean placed a hand
upon him. If one picture is worth a thousand words, one touch must be
worth ten thousand to a leper. Is there anyone here who is still
frightened of Jesus the Christ?
This miracle is called by scholars an action
miracle. It happened in a nanosecond. This is unlike other miracles in
Mark. There the Teacher takes the man aside, looks to the heavens,
sighs, puts spittle on the man's ear, etc. But here the Nazarene felt
there was no time for preliminaries. This fellow's misery had to be
terminated immediately. What does that tell you about the Person whom
you worship? Would that we could teach ourselves to have just a
fraction of that compassion. Though we may not have a healing ministry,
each of us can practice a hearing ministry. Suffering people need to
talk.
Walt Whitman wrote, "Seeing a wounded soldier on the
battlefield, I do not ask who he is. I become the wounded man."
So should it be with us.
One who is Christ-centered instead of self-centered,
said GK Chesterton, is a sane person in an insane world.
One final note! The cured man taught us how to
pray. His prayer needed only eight words. Jesus showed fondness for
short prayers. Check Matthew 6:7, "In your prayers do not use a lot of
meaningless words..." Jesus is e-mailing us the information that brief
prayers bring quick answers.
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http://www.st.ignatius.net/pastor.html
6 Ordinary Time
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Sixth
Sunday A Message From Hawaii: Love Never Fails
When
I was fourteen or fifteen I had to do a book report for my high school
religion class on a biography by John Farrow, Mia Farrow's father,
entitled Damien the Leper. That was my first exposure to the terrible
leper colony of Kaluapapa on the Island of Molokai part of the Hawaiian
Islands. It was also my first exposure to the heroism and
sanctity of St. Damien de Veuster, the Belgian Catholic Missionary who
lived among the lepers and contracted leprosy himself.
A
number of years ago, I had a free ticket to Hawaii. I made it a
point to see visit Kaluapapa. Originally, I had thought that I
could just take a ferry over to the Island of Molokai and then a bus to
Kaluapapa. I found out that the patients at Kaluapapa did not
want anyone in their midst unless that person was with the town
sheriff, Richard, who organized one tour a day. So I took a small
plane, one of those where every passenger has two window seats, and
flew to the Kaluapapa Airport where Richard met me and the four other
people.
The
approach to Kaluapapa was past the steep walls of Molokai descending
into the ocean. These walls are steeper than the Big Sur of
California or the Amalfi Coast of Italy. Then Kaluapapa appeared,
a flat peninsula completely exposed to the weather, with steep
mountains behind it which served as a prison for the lepers.
At
that time there were about ninety patients still living in Kaluapapa,
but with the advent of sulfides their disease is treatable. In
fact, modern day leprosy, known as Hanson's disease, is now recognized
as the least contagious of all contagious diseases. The patients
are free to come and go. They no longer have to live on
Molokai. Richard, the town sheriff and tour guide, himself had
leprosy but has spent the last number of years traveling the world and
speaking about Kaluapapa and about Fr. Damien.
Up
to fifty years ago, leprosy was feared and treated with a form of
superstition. Before sulfides, leprosy was a terrible looking
disease with sores throughout the body and blockages in the circulatory
system resulting in parts of the body deteriorating. The people
afflicted with leprosy were treated as though they were
criminals. In Hawaii, as in other places throughout the world,
hospitals would not even take lepers. Instead the lepers were forced to
live in colonies with laws separating them from society similar to
those laws we heard in the first reading for today. In Hawaii the
lepers were put into cages, shipped off to Molokai, and literally
dumped into the ocean. Only those well enough to swim to shore
would live. Richard said that most of the Polynesians, water
people, were good swimmers, many of the Asians, Europeans and Americans
never made it to the shore. Once on shore, the lepers faced total
chaos. Everyone was sick. There was no medicine, no
doctors, no shelters, no blankets, nothing but the weather beating on
the exposed peninsula.
In
the middle of the last century, the Catholic Bishop of the Hawaiian
Islands, the Bishop of Honolulu, knew that there were seven to
ten Catholics among the two or three hundred lepers in
Kaluapapa. There was a religious brother, I believe his name was
Br. Andrew, in Hawaii who was a skilled carpenter. The
bishop asked the brother to build a small Church on Maui, take it apart
and number each piece and then reassemble the Church at
Kaluapapa. The brother showed up with two Polynesian workmen, but
when the Polynesians saw the lepers they fled, probably hiding in
the jungle. Soon after they arrived, the brother flagged down a
passing boat and returned to Honolulu where he begged the bishop to
never send him back to Kaluapapa.
Now,
on the big island of Hawaii, there was a young priest named Damien de
Veuster who had been a carpenter before he became a priest. Fr.
Damien had built numerous small churches on the Big Island. The
Bishop asked Fr. Damien to go to Kaluapapa and reassemble the little
church that had been sent there. Fr. Damien was to have no
contact with the lepers, for the bishop did not have many priests, and
did not want to lose Fr. Damien. He told him that he was not to
anoint or hear confessions of the lepers or to bury them or to have any
contact with them at all.
When
Fr. Damien first saw the lepers he was frightened beyond belief.
But he was different. Fr. Damien was the first non leper to stay
overnight on Kaluapapa. He didn't see the disease, he saw the
people who were suffering. That first night he slept outside
under a tree because he didn't think it was right that he should build
a shelter for himself if these poor sick people were exposed to the
weather. He immediately began building shelters for the
people. He constructed the Church and began saying Mass. He
was shocked to find over a hundred people wanting to pray with him,
even though less then ten of them were Catholic. He was the first
to show Christ's love to them.
A
boat came to pick up Fr. Damien after his 30 day medical visa
expired, but the story goes that the lepers fought off the crew
preventing them from landing and taking Fr. Damien. Richard said
that that was not true, the lepers were too weak to do anything.
Actually, the bosun who was in charge of the landing party saw the
lepers crying out that they didn't want Fr. Damien to leave. It
was only after his death that the bosun's memoirs were revealed telling
that one of those lepers was his sister. Fr. Damien wanted to
stay, so the bosun made up the story and left him there. At that
time Honolulu was in the midst of battling an outbreak of the plague,
so Fr. Damien's presence on Kaluapapa slipped through the cracks of the
medical people on the island. Time would later reveal that the
secretary who was entrusted with the task of making out the
medical visas to approach Kaluapapa kept making up new visas for
Fr. Damien. Her mother was on that island. After six months, no
one wanted Fr. Damien to return to the islands. The medical
people were convinced that after being there that long, he probably
already had contracted leprosy.
So
Fr. Damien stayed. He built shelters, a water system, and turned
Kaluapapa into a little functioning community. He planted over a
thousand trees to protect the people from the elements. He built the
Church and prayed for the people and with the people. Lepers of
all faiths and no faith went to his Masses. They said, "He holds
our hands when we die." Fr. Damien wrote out to organizations around
the world to provide help for these people and received shipments of
blankets and food and the everyday supplies that are far more valuable
than gold. One leper wrote, "Today is the happiest day of my
life. Today I have received my blanket. This is my
blanket. I will be buried in it. Today I have hope and joy,
for I have experienced God's love."
Although leprosy is not as contagious as feared, Fr. Damien contracted
leprosy, probably because he did not pay much attention to caring for
his own health. Towards the end of his life a Mother Marianne and
a group of sisters joined him on the island and continued his work.
On a
little hill of Kaluapapa there is a cross with a few words from
scripture that sums up what was at the heart of Fr. Damien's
work. The words are from St. Paul's first letter to the
Corinthians......."Love never fails."
"A
leper approached Jesus with a request, kneeling down as he addressed
him. 'If you will to do so, you can cure me.' Moved with pity, Jesus
stretched out his hand, touched him and said: 'I do will it. Be
cured.'"
In
Statuary Hall of the Capital building in Washington D. C., the State of
Hawaii erected a statue honoring Fr. Damien. What he and Mother
Marianne did, their heroism, was extraordinary. They brought
Jesus Christ to outcasts of society. They were Jesus Christ,
reaching out and touching a leper, being concerned for the leper, not
concerned with themselves.
Who
are the outcasts of our society? Are the outcasts people with
AIDS or other terrible illnesses? Are the outcasts the poor of
the third world? Is the outcast of your family or my family
that son or daughter, brother or sister, who has embarrassed a
family by getting involved with illegal activities?
The
example of St. Damien, the message of our gospel, is that we can reach
out to those who are suffering and touch them with the healing power of
Jesus Christ. Yes, by doing this we may open ourselves up to
insult and attack from those around us and even from those we want to
help. But the healing touch of Jesus Christ which we have been
empowered to offer can conquer the pain around us.
Love
never fails.
That
should not be the case with the committed Christian, with we who are
here now. We know who we are. Our value, our dignity,
our meaning in life comes from Jesus Christ. It is all “Yes” for
us. Jesus Christ is all yes. Our union with Jesus Christ is
all that matters regardless of what is happening around us.
Jesus Christ is the reason for our optimism. Even when tragedy strikes,
even when a loved one falls gravely ill and then passes on, we remain
optimistic. The yes of Christ is so much greater than the pain of
death. Even though we grieve we still know that with Jesus Christ, and
through Jesus Christ, our loved ones live. We believe in the existence
of the spiritual. We believe that those who die will live forever
in the love of the Lord. Yes, we miss them terribly. Yes, we
grieve deeply. But we also know that they are in peace. We
believe that the souls of the faithful departed, our loved ones,
continue to love us and themselves guide us through their own prayers
to the Divine Lover. We believe that a time will come when we will be
with them again.
It
is all positive with the Lord. We follow our consciences.
We choose that which is proper and moral, not that which is popular but
immoral. Does that mean that there are a lot of “no’s” in our
lives, like “No getting drunk, No sex outside of marriage, No hating
others.” Yes, we limit our actions to avoid the negatives of
life, but we do that so we can live in the positives of life. And by
doing this, by living morally we simplify our lives. Did
you ever notice the chaos that comes into our lives when we sin?
When we sin, life gets complicated. As an example, consider
lying. Who did we tell that lie to? What other lies do I now have
to tell to cover the first lie up? Who knows what about it, about
me? It is the same with all sin. When we sin, be it a lie or any sin,
we complicate out lives. That is why the Bible equate sin with
chaos. But when we just stick to what our conscience is telling us,
when we stick to the Lord, life is simple, and we are happy. God
brings order in chaos. He replaces complication with peace. No
matter what the world throws at us, if we are true to our Christian
core, we will be a peace with God, with ourselves and even with
others. It is all yes with the Lord.
There is no doubt that many people misuse freedom. Perhaps when
they go off to college or the service, or perhaps earlier, in high
school or even in middle school, many get involved in the pagan
lifestyle. The pagan lifestyle is the deification of the
physical, the turning of money, stuff, and selfishness into gods.
The pagan lifestyle assumes that happiness can be bought. The
pagan lifestyle results in people being in turmoil. But Jesus Christ is
far more powerful than the forces of the world. When through the
Grace of God, we just put our trust in the Lord, we receive healing,
and forgiveness, and peace. When we change our lifestyle to that
of a Christian, we don’t feel that we have given up anything other than
turmoil. There is no “no” with the Lord. It is all “yes”,
all peace, His peace.
When
we pray the Mass, we give our struggles over to the Lord. We let
God transform our difficulties into occasions of prayer. We need to
trust God. He is not alternatively yes and no. He is always
yes.
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http://stmaryvalleybloom.org/
* available in Spanish - see
Spanish homilies
6 Ordinary Time
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The
Leper Inside
(February 12, 2012)
Bottom line: Jesus cured the leper. He wants to heal the leper inside.
I am sure you have heard of the Scottish novelist, Robert Louis
Stevenson. He not only wrote wonderful adventure stories, like
"Treasure Island," but more serious works such as "The Strange Case of
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde." In that novel, he explored the odd combination
of good and evil in one person.
As Stevenson observed dramatically, a human being can have high
aspirations and at the same time do horrendous things. The existence of
so much evil and cruelty made Stevenson wonder if God really exists.
All of his doubts came together when he first met a leper. Lepers not
only suffered a painful physical condition; they often faced harsh,
even cruel treatment. How can a good God allow such suffering and
cruelty? Before I tell you about Stevenson's encounter with a leper, I
would like to give a short description of the disease:
"Leprosy is a slowly progressing bacterial infection that affects the
skin, peripheral nerves in the hands and feet, and mucous membranes of
the nose, throat, and eyes. Destruction of the nerve endings causes the
the affected areas to lose sensation. Occasionally, because of the loss
of feeling, the fingers and toes become mutilated and fall off, causing
the deformities that are typically associated with the disease."
The medical description gives some idea of the horror of leprosy. The
horror was heightened because Robert Louis Stevenson first met a leper
in a beautiful setting - the Hawaiian Island of Molokai. In the
nineteenth century - before they had any cure for leprosy - they simply
banished them to remote places. When Stevenson visited the lepers'
colony on Molokai, it shocked him and made him question God's
existence. Stevenson wrote that he saw "abominable deformations of our
common manhood ... a population as only now and then surrounds us in
the horror of a nightmare ... the butt-ends of human beings lying there
almost unrecognizable but still breathing, still thinking, still
remembering ... a pitiful place to visit, a hell to dwell in."
Stevenson probably would have given in to depression, even despair, if
he had not seen something else. On that same island, a group of
Christians had established a clinic to care for the lepers. Among those
Christians was a priest from Belgium, Fr. Damien Joseph de Veuster. The
life of Fr. Damien inspired Stevenson so much that wrote a lengthy
letter defending him against accusations and predicting his
canonization. His predictions were accurate: In 2009 Pope Benedict
beatified Fr. Damien. He is now known as Saint Damien of Molokai. The
compassion of Saint Damien deeply impressed Stevenson.
Today we see the greatest example of compassion. Remember that, at the
time of Jesus, leprosy was more than a hideous physical disease. It
also brought painful social and religious consequences: The leper had
to keep his distance from others, wear a bell and cry out, "unclean,
unclean." Perhaps most cruel, he was cut off from the consolation of
religious rites. Jesus did something extraordinary, really unthinkable.
He reached across that social division and touched the leper. By
touching the man, Jesus contaminated himself. St. Matthew says, "he
took our infirmities upon himself." Jesus did this because he saw
beyond the disfigurement of leprosy. He saw the worth of the person -
in spite of external deformity and internal decay.*
Jesus' compassion challenges us. Not that leprosy holds terror today.
Thanks be to God, we now have medicines that effectively treat the
disease. We do, nevertheless, meet people who suffer from a deeper form
of leprosy - an internal disfigurement. I can think of people I shy
away from. No one in this congregation, of course - but, then, this
homily is not a public confession. :)
I would like to mention one person whom we shy away from. His
disfigurements make us unwilling to look at him. We have, in fact,
lived with him all our lives. I think you know who I mean. Robert Louis
Stevenson wrote about him in "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde." Like the noble Dr. Jekyll, an ignoble being lurks inside. We
keep that part hidden - maybe even from our own selves. That's
understandable, but it could be a fatal mistake.
Today's Gospel contains a simple, powerful prayer: "If you wish, you
can make me clean." Doubt sometimes tempts us, but there is one thing
we cannot doubt: Jesus' compassion. He is willing to take our illness,
our infirmity upon himself. In doing so, he can help us show compassion
to others. Robert Louis Stevenson glimpsed that compassion when he
visited the island of Molokai. It enabled him to overcome his doubts
and express his faith in God.
I would like to conclude this homily by reading what Stevenson wrote in
the guest book at Molokai. He composed a spontaneous poem, where he
admits that he was tempted to deny God. The beauty of compassion,
however, caused him to fall silent and adore God. Here is the poem:
To see the infinite pity of this place
The mangled limb, the devastated face,
The innocent sufferer smiling at the rod
A fool was tempted to deny his God.
He sees, he shrinks. But if he gazes again.
Lo, beauty springing from the breast of pain!
He marks the cisterns on the mournful shores;
And even a fool is silent and adores."
**********
*The example of St. Francis might help. For him the act requiring most
courage was to embrace the leper. And only by doing so, did he
experience freedom and joy. Could something similar be true regarding
leper inside? And is it not time to obey Jesus' command, "Show yourself
to the priest..."?
Renewal of Vows, Prayers of Faithful and Blessing of Married Couples on
World Marriage Day.
General Intercessions for Sixth Ordinary Sunday (from Priests for Life)
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http://www.agreeley.com/homilies.html
6 Ordinary Time
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February
12th 2012 A.D.
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Mk 1/40-55
"People came to Jesus from every quarter"
Background:
This story may me an early version of the story of the ten
lepers. However the point is quite different. In this version the
leper, far from not thanking Jesus, goes about the land and expresses
his gratitude to all who would listen.
The passage is made even more opaque by Mark’s literary device of
the “Messianic Secret” –he builds his gospel around the structure that
Jesus was trying to keep who he was a secret, which doesn’t seem to be
any more than a narrative form.
Surely, however, Jesus did not want to be known as the kind of
military messiah that so many people in his time wanted and expected.
Story:
Once a senior in high school helped a freshman study for a test.
Can you imagine anything more weird? A senior wasting time on a
freshman? But the help worked and the freshman earned an A, a badly
needed A, in the test. Now don’t tell anyone, please, the senior said.
They’ll think I’m like totally weird for helping a punk like you and
then every punk in school will want me to help them.
Well, the freshman shot off his big mouth, like freshman always
do. The other seniors laughed at the one who had helped him, but
secretly thought it was kind of cool. And sure enough mobs of freshmen
descended on our poor hero demanding help. Well, she said, I guess I
have myself to blame. I knew this would happen. Now I have to help tons
of them. They ought to put be on the faculty payroll.
To tell the truth, however, she liked to help.
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http://www.saintvincentarchabbey.org/sunday_homily
6 Ordinary Time
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February 12, 2012
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mark 1:40-45, Cycle B
Gospel Summary
This passage continues the narrative of Jesus' mission immediately
following his baptism in the Jordan and the call of the first
disciples. As beloved Son and Messiah, his mission is to proclaim the
good news of the coming of God's kingdom. God's rule over all creation
would bring to an end the domination of Satan, characterized by all
forms of untruth, violence, sickness and death. That the power of God's
rule is present in Jesus becomes evident to the amazement of the people
by his teaching with authority, his healing and his casting out demons.
This Sunday's gospel tells us of Jesus' cure of a man afflicted with
leprosy (a term referring to any repulsive skin disease). A leper comes
to Jesus and begs to be cured. Moved with compassion, Jesus touches the
"untouchable" and cures him. He then sends him to a priest so that he
can be reinstated into the community.
After curing the leper, Jesus had admonished him not to publicize what
had happened. Mark here anticipates a major theme he will develop more
explicitly in his gospel: namely, that people, even Peter and the rest
of his disciples, will misunderstand Jesus' mission. The theme reflects
an aspect of Satan's attempt to entice Jesus to redefine his mission
solely to the satisfaction of people's temporal needs, and thereby to
become the messiah of his own earthly, political kingdom. The kingdom
of Satan would remain essentially in tact had Jesus succumbed to that
temptation. John's gospel also alludes to Jesus' concern about the
mistaken notion people had of his mission: "Since Jesus knew that they
were going to come and carry him off to make him king, he withdrew
again to the mountain alone...you are looking for me not because you
saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled" (6:15-26).
Jesus, however, is faithful to his Father's will to the end. Filled
with divine compassion, he responds to the temporal needs of people for
healing and for food; but ultimately he wants to give the gift of
eternal life with God, the only gift that will satisfy the restlessness
and the hunger of the human heart.
Life Implications
Since the Church is the means by which Christ extends his mission for
the sake of God's kingdom through history, healing will be an essential
characteristic of its service. Christians, through the urging of
Christ's compassion, must bring healing to the world's sickness, making
possible medical care even for the "untouchables" of our own society.
In the Catholic tradition, Christ's compassionate hand touches the sick
in a special way through the sacrament of anointing. The Church like
Christ will be tempted to reduce the meaning of God's kingdom to the
relief of people's obvious and pressing temporal needs. Christ's
compassion, however, continues to extend beyond these needs to the
deepest human need for personal transformation through communion in
eternal, divine life. We can see how Christ's compassionate hand
touches the sick in both aspects in the prayers appointed for the
administration of the sacrament of anointing.
Like Jesus each of us will endure a trial of faith when beset by
suffering and approaching death. Am I really God's beloved daughter? Am
I really God's beloved son? Is it death that defines the meaning of
human existence? The source of our hope is that we share Christ's own
unconquerable hope through the gift of his Spirit. Jesus prayed to be
delivered from suffering and death; nevertheless, as things worked out,
he trusted in God's love through the experience of his suffering,
abandonment, and dying. In our time of trial, as the Letter to the
Hebrews tells, we must keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and
perfecter of faith. "For the sake of the joy that lay before him he
endured the cross, despising its shame, and has taken his seat at the
right hand of the throne of God" (Heb 12-2).
Campion P. Gavaler, OSB
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http://www.christusrex.org/www1/mcitl/lowhome.html Meeting Christ in the Liturgy
6 Ordinary Time
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SIXTH
Sunday
Leviticus 13, 1-2. 44-46; Psalm 32; 1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1; Mark
1:40-45
"Go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what
Moses commanded." (Mark 1, 44)
Some say that priesthood is a creation of the Church and that Christ
did not intend to make a priesthood. Here he acknowledges the Levitical
priesthood, which he raised up and made perfect by his own sacrifice,
creating an eternal priesthood which shall not pass away. The bodily
healing of the stain of leprosy is a sign of the perfect healing of
redemption made once for all by Christ the High Priest.
The one priesthood of Christ
Everything that the priesthood of the Old Covenant prefigured finds its
fulfillment in Christ Jesus, the "one mediator between God and men." (1
Tim 2:5) The Christian tradition considers Melchizedek, "priest of God
Most High," as a prefiguration of the priesthood of Christ, the unique
"high priest after the order of Melchizedek'; (Heb 5:10; cf. 6:20; Gen
14:18) "holy, blameless, unstained," (Heb 7:26) "by a single offering
he has forever perfected for all time those who are sanctified," (Heb
10:14) that is, by the unique sacrifice of the cross. (CCC 1544)
The redemptive sacrifice of Christ is unique, accomplished once for
all; yet it is made present in the Eucharistic sacrifice of the Church.
The same is true of the one priesthood of Christ; it is made present
through the ministerial priesthood without diminishing the uniqueness
of Christ's priesthood: "Only Christ is the true priest, the others
being only his ministers." (St. Thomas Aquinas, Hebr. 8, 4) (CCC 1545)
(Paragraph numbers indicate reference to the Catechism of the Catholic
Church.)
I look forward to meeting you here again next week as, together, we
"meet Christ in the liturgy", Father Cusick (Publish with permission.)
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/mcitl/
For further reading on today' Gospel, see also these paragraphs in the
CCC: 1546 and following.)
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http://www.ctk-thornbury.org.uk/
6 Ordinary Time
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