REFLECTIONS ON THE HEALING OF A LEPER (Mk 1: 40-45) II
Yesterday we began to meditate on the passage of Scripture in which the Lord, touching him, heals a man consumed by leprosy. Before looking at this gospel scene, I would like for us to briefly consider the attitude of inner calm with which we must meditate on the Gospel and also the context that precedes this miraculous healing.
It is important “not be in a rush” when we meditate on the Word of God. In prayer, we listen to Someone who is eternal and speaks to us from eternity. In the Liturgy of the Hours there is a very beautiful prayer that goes like this: “Lord, watch over us by day and by night. In the midst of life’s countless changes, strengthen us with your never-changing love.” (Evening Prayer in Ordinary Time, Wednesday II) We live “in the midst of life's countless changes”, we live in time, and when we take the Holy Scriptures and open them to enter into a dialogue with God, the One who awaits us in them is a Being who is “never-changing”, who does not experience the human realities of haste, anxiety or restlessness. As the Catechism says, prayer is the “living and personal relationship with the living and true God” (CCE 2558), and for God, “one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years, like one day”. (2 Pt 3:8)
The first thing that we should shake off when putting ourselves in his presence is the anguish or the demand to ask him to answer our questions here and now. We are dealing with Someone who can make us saints in a second, or on the contrary, complete his work in us over a very long life. In prayer, we open ourselves to God and place ourselves in His hands, and the time - the when and the how - from that moment on, depend totally on Him.
The Word of God is eternal, as is God. The Old Testament affirms it: "Your word, Lord, is eternal, and it is firm in heaven." (Ps 119, 89) In the Gospel of St. John, the first verse makes this proclamation: "In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (Jn 1:1) That word of God is not simply the eternal Wisdom of God, as if it were a doctrine that He had hidden with him outside of this time and this created world. The Word of God is God and, "in the fullness of time" (Gal 4:4) that Word became flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. (Jn 1:13)
It will be important to keep this in mind when we contemplate the scene of the healing of the leper and, in general, any mystery of the life of Jesus Christ. We cannot always expect God to give us immediate answers to the problems that plague us. Probably, most of our life will be spent "waiting" and this waiting is an exercise in humility because it reminds me that the times of my life are not controlled by me.
The fact that the word of God is eternal, and so from that perspective is, so to speak "outside of time", also implies that it does not age and that it is always current for us. That is why we read the sacred scriptures at every Holy Mass. Not because we are nostalgic for the past and we simply want to remember what happened, but because those events, which are the Word of the Eternal, are as present and as fresh now as they were then and will be at the end of history. It also means that, in them, there is a message for me today, here, in the concrete circumstances of this moment of my life, that I can listen to and that the Holy Spirit can help me to understand.
Let us ask God that in these days when things seem to be going too fast for some, and too slow for others, that he may grant us the grace to leave our anguish at the door of our prayer, entering with a serene spirit into the silence of God, and listening to the ever new message that the Lord, from eternity, directs to each of us in our current circumstances in the story of the healing of the leper.
