REFLECTIONS ON THE HEALING OF A LEPER (MK 1:40-45) VI
We close the first week of these reflections contemplating the prayer of Jesus in a deserted place just before sunrise. (Mk 1:35) Somehow, in this image all the teaching of these six days is summarized. The eternal Word of God, the Word made flesh, goes out to pray in the solitude and tranquility of a remote place. What more can be said? Do you see how even the Lord's silence and example teaches us? Who can justify the absence of interior life when he sees Christ praying? What need is there to speak about the interior dispositions for good prayer when we see them here, barely illuminated by the moonlight, in the face of the Son of God? Where better to learn of love and Christian spirituality than in the contemplation of Jesus drawing away from the chaos of the world to the peaceful presence of his heavenly Father?
Surely many of us, over these days in which so many things are happening, have felt the desire to run away with Jesus and lose ourselves in some lost corner where no one could find us. The reality is that, when we pray, we are truly with Jesus in his nocturnal prayer and, at the same time, he prays in us because in Baptism we were grafted onto his Person. Therefore, I want to again call us to fidelity to Jesus in our personal prayer until we are of one heart with Him.
In my opinion, almost all of us have fallen into the trap of the devil these days. We have allowed events to disturb us, news to take us down, disappointments to discourage us. The enemy has stirred up the waters, which are now murky, and so prevented us from seeing clearly. He who is the prince of darkness, with seemingly good excuses, or as Saint Ignatius of Loyola says, "under the cloak of good", as if he were an angel of light, has made us believe that it is charity to judge others or to dedicate endless hours to the news of a virus.
I don't yet want to make a moral assessment of some of the responses we are hearing these days. What I am saying is that, in the face of so much noise, the figure of Jesus praying alone has to tell us something. It is such a powerful image, so eloquent in its extreme simplicity, that we cannot turn this page of the Gospel without drawing from it a teaching for ourselves.
Looking at our communities in recent weeks, we could use the words of the 19th-century Danish philosopher Sören Kierkegaard, who was so insightful and so authentic in his Christian thought, and say: “The current state of the world and of life, in general, is one of disease. If I were a doctor and asked my opinion, I would say, "create silence". Lead human beings to silence. The word of God cannot be heard in the noisy contemporary world."
Maybe we were lost in those first days of this crisis because we were not prepared for unexpected, unprecedented news, but we can learn from our mistakes, and from now on isolate ourselves more from the noise and lower the decibels of the world around us. Silence is a shield that protects inner peace. It is a defense that keeps us from falling into anxiety and haste. It is a fortress that we raise against the onslaught of the world and its lies. It is the interior space in which God manifests Himself to the one who wants to hear him.
Let us ask Jesus that in the current circumstances in which we may be forced to stay at home, we take advantage of this “imposed” retreat to be with the Lord, to create silence and thus listen to the only Word that gives eternal life.