Homily 6^th Sunday Year B
February 11, 2018
Fr. Roberto Corral, OP
Holy Rosary Church, Antioch, CA


Title: Instruments of Jesus’ Compassion
Theme: We are called to be instruments of Jesus’ compassion bringing love, healing and dignity to others.
Readings: Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46; 1Corinthians10:31-11:1; Mark 1:40-45

In December, 1967, the movie “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” was released; perhaps some of you remember seeing it or hearing about it. You can see an image of the advertising for that movie on the screens. It was a very daring movie at that time because it is the story of an interracial couple who want to marry each other. The young couple invite their parents to dinner to try and get their support for the marriage. Interracial marriages between African-Americans were pretty rare in the U.S. at that time. It was one of the big social taboos that existed at that time. Even though it is more acceptable nowadays, it is not always easy. Breaking social taboos can still be a very difficult and even dangerous thing to do in many cultures.
 
Well, in today’s Gospel, Jesus breaks not only a strong social taboo of his time, but a religious one as well. As you heard in the first reading from Leviticus, for many centuries before Christ lepers were considered unclean and had to isolate themselves from everyone else – even their families and friends. Theirs was a fate worse than death: total and permanent banishment from everyone they loved. I think most of us here cannot even imagine what that must have been like. This is perhaps why the leper in today’s Gospel chose to risk breaking the Jewish law himself by approaching Jesus in the first place – he was desperate, not just for physical healing, but perhaps, most of all, for some kind of human warmth and love.
 
The first thing Jesus does for the poor leper was to touch him. This was absolutely forbidden by the Mosaic Law! Jesus made himself impure by touching the unclean, untouchable leper. The thing is, Jesus could easily have healed the man without touching him – he had already performed many healings by just saying a healing word. But instead, and definitely on purpose, Jesus reaches out to give this man perhaps the first human touch he had felt in years. The man must have felt something like a current of electricity running through his entire body – he touched me! He touched me!
 
With this one simple gesture, Jesus did three amazing things. First, of course, he healed the man physically; that alone was a great gift to the leper. But more importantly, Jesus healed him psychologically, emotionally and socially because he would no longer be shunned as unclean, untouchable and unwanted. Instead of living in permanent banishment and isolation,
the leper would now be able to go back home and be with his loved ones and live in community.
 
But most important of all, Jesus helped the leper see God and see himself in a whole new way.
He could now see that God loved him, accepted him and validated him unconditionally, in spite of his disease and being unclean. Even though his own people had rejected, banished and isolated him, God had not. And he could see himself as a beloved child of that God of love. Whatever else that might happen to him in his life, he knew that nothing and no one could ever take that identity away from him of being God’s beloved child.
 
This Gospel is good news for all of us because it reminds us that we too, at the very deepest part of our being, are God’s beloved children – whatever our skin color, social or economic condition, whatever our afflictions or limitations, whatever our sexual orientation, whatever our level of faith,
whatever our sins and failures might be, we, like the leper, will always remain God’s beloved children. Amen? Amen!
 
Now, the challenging part of this Gospel is for us to understand that we are called to be like Jesus for others. Jesus calls us to be his instruments of compassion who are willing to cross boundaries and borders, who are willing to risk breaking social, cultural, or religious taboos, who are willing to bring to others the love, healing and dignity they need and deserve. Is there someone whom we or our society consider “unclean” that we need to recognize, to touch, to forgive, to validate and affirm, to remind that he or she is God’s beloved child in spite of what they look like, who they are or even what they have done?

[Slide #3: Pope Francis kissing deformed man]
I would like to leave you with some beautiful images on the screens of Pope Francis compassionately touching and kissing a horribly deformed man.
He is doing what Jesus did in today’s Gospel and what we are called to do:
to be an instrument of Jesus’ compassion bringing love, healing and dignity to others