After a two-week break, I would like to pick up where we left off in the commentary on the healing of the leper that we were meditating on together.
Today I would like to briefly summarize what we have seen so far to be sure that no one gets lost along the way. As was said in the past, Repetita iuvant, which literally means: "things that are repeated help.” or freely translated, “it is useful to repeat what is important”.
We began by speaking of Christ as the eternal Word of God that entered history. In Jesus, God wanted to begin a conversation with every man; he goes out to meet each person to offer him the great gift of redemption and eternal salvation. In the Lord, everything has a meaning - what is said and what is silent; what he does and what he does not do; what he manifests and what he obscures. Christ is the great gift of God to the world, and the eternal and unending mission of a Christian in this life, his only goal in reality, is to decipher that message, to assimilate the mystery of his Person, to appropriate the life of Jesus until he becomes one with Him.
To receive this gift from heaven, the heart has to dispose itself with certain necessary attitudes: silence, moderation, contemplation of the Divine Word, and commitment to a God who speaks in interior recollection. In this also we can find the most elevated and excellent model in the Rabbi of Nazareth. In the first chapter of the Gospel of St. Mark, we saw him move away from the tumult of the city to seek in solitude that which we cannot find among the clamor of the people. (Mk 1:35) Truly, prayer is given only to the soul that generously enters the path of interiority. It is there that we give God the space he needs to reveal himself in us.
From that encounter with the living God, the never-ending task of the Church that we heard in yesterday's Gospel is born: "as the Father has sent me, so I also send you." (Jn 20:21) The word apostle in Greek (ἀπόστολος) means, “sent”. Christ has come into the world as the Apostle of the Father, as his envoy, and in turn, he sends us, his disciples, to continue his saving mission. The life of a baptized person must be luminous like that of Jesus. We have to become less and less because, really, we are not important. Like St. John the Baptist (Jn 3:30), we actually have to decrease in order for him to manifest himself in all his glory.
And that is where we left off - summing up the Lord's public ministry in two words: preaching and healing. Basically, that was what Christ did wherever he went: he preached conversion and made visible the mercy of God with the healing of the sick and the possessed.
In that succession of time and season that we call history, the Church must be the echo of the Word. She must resonate a message that is not hers and must heal with a grace that does not have its origin in her. The Word of Jesus and its healing action continue this way throughout the centuries in the evangelical teaching and the sacraments. Christ continues speaking when we open the sacred texts, when we listen to the voice of the living Tradition of the Church, when we allow the Magisterium to deliver the authentic interpretation of Revelation. In the same way, Christ continues to heal the wounds of his brothers; he continues to touch them in the sacramental action of the People of God. In the water that cleanses, Jesus washes us; in the Bread that gives eternal life, the Risen Lord nourishes us with himself; with the holy chrism, it is He who consecrates us and through the hands of the ordained minister our Lord imparts the fruit of his redemptive work, the Holy Spirit, who makes all things new.
This is where we have come so far. Beginning tomorrow, God willing, our eyes will be focused on the scene of the healing of the leper, revealing very slowly, little by little, the mystery of this page of the Gospel.