REFLECTIONS ON THE HEALING OF A LEPER (Mk 1: 40-45) IV
We have spoken over these past few days of some of the attitudes necessary to receive the Word of God profitably. We said that when we enter into dialogue with God, He who is eternal comes to us. Somehow we also enter into the eternity of God and this forces us to slow our pace, to accept God’s time, which is longer and unhurried. Yesterday, on the Solemnity of the Incarnation, we recognized that the Word that was outside of time entered time when He became flesh in the womb of Mary Most Holy. We concluded by saying that Jesus speaks to us with his words and with his whole life because He himself is the Word, the fullness of God's revelation to us.
St. John of the Cross, in his Ascent of Mount Carmel, has these most beautiful words: “Those who now desire to question God or receive some vision or revelation are guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of offending him by not fixing their eyes entirely on Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty.
God could answer as follows: If I have already told you all things in my Word, my Son, and if I have no other word, what answer or revelation can I now make that would surpass this? Fasten your eyes on him alone because in him I have spoken and revealed all and in him you will discover even more than you ask for and desire. (…)
On that day when I descended on him with my Spirit on Mount Tabor proclaiming: This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, hear him (Mt. 17:5), I gave up these methods of answering and teaching and presented them to him. Hear him because I have no more faith to reveal or truths to manifest. If I spoke before, it was to promise Christ. If they questioned me, their inquiries were related to their petitions and longings for Christ in whom they were to obtain every good, as is now explained in all the doctrine of the evangelists and apostles.” (Ascent to Mount Carmel, Book II, chap. 22, 5)
St. Teresa of Jesus says something similar, but in a different way. She says in The Book of Her Life that one of the first interior words that she heard from Jesus in her prayer was this:“Don't be sad, for I shall give you a living book.” That "living book" is the Lord Himself, as she later explains: "His Majesty has been the true book where I have seen the truths. Blessed is such a book, which leaves printed what has to be read and done, so that it cannot be forgotten! ” His Majesty had become the true book in which I saw the truths. Blessed be such a book that leaves what must be read and done so impressed that you cannot forget!” (26,2)
Many more examples and words of so many saints throughout history could be cited. They all agree on the same thing: everything in the Lord is full of light because He Himself is the light. The path of great souls in the Church is that of people who have been able to silence other voices in order to pay more and more attention to Jesus.
In a world with so much noise, in these days when we receive more information than we can possibly process, the practice I am inviting you to is more necessary than ever. Everything we must learn is in Jesus. The questions are many, but the answer is always Christ. And I dare to ask you, if you can, to isolate yourselves from the noise of these days. For a week don’t listen to news about the coronavirus. Do not read news, watch news, or fall into the trap of going to the Internet to "get informed". Take care of the relationships with the people around you, and above all, with the Lord. Spend more time reading Scripture than any other type of literature. Protect that interior space into which only those we allow to pass may enter.
Tomorrow we will speak of the second of the verses of the Gospel of St. Mark that was mentioned yesterday and that, it seems to me, gives us the immediate framework to enter the story of the cure of the leper. May God give us, as St. Teresa says, that "living Book" where everything is said, everything is written, everything is contained, the Word in whom the Father has already told us all things.