Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent
April 01, 2020 12:00 pm · Sergio Muñoz Fita
REFLECTIONS ON THE HEALING OF A LEPER (Mk 1: 40-45) IX
"He told them, “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come.” So he went into their synagogues, preaching and driving out demons throughout the whole of Galilee.” (v. 38-39)
We find ourselves in the verses that immediately precede the account of the healing of the leper. Christ announces more than a message: the Good News he shares is Himself. He does not simply give us some wonderful and sublime ideas, but a Person who offers himself to each man because “for this” the Lord has come. "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these I am the foremost."(1Tim: 15)
Yesterday we said that in order to receive Christ, a conversion must take place, and hopefully the events of these current times will effectively lead us to it. Converting is much more than a change in behavior or life. It is welcoming Jesus and letting Him take charge of our lives. This is how Pope Benedict XVI expressed it:
“With conversion, we are aiming for the high standard of Christian living, we entrust ourselves to the living and personal Gospel which is Jesus Christ. He is our final goal and the profound meaning of conversion. He is the path on which all are called to walk through life, letting themselves be illumined by his light and sustained by his power which moves our steps (…) Repentance is the total " yes " of those who consign their whole life to the Gospel responding freely to Christ who first offers himself to humankind as the Way, the Truth and the Life, as the only One who sets us free and saves us. This is the precise meaning of the first words with which, according to the Evangelist Mark, Jesus begins preaching the "Gospel of God": "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the Gospel." (Mk 1:15)
Jesus goes out to preach, and on this missionary journey in which he will meet the leper, he is accompanied by his disciples. In fact, the Lord invites them with these words: "Let's go somewhere else, to preach..." It is as if the Lord had said to them: "Let's go ... you and me, together. Come with me. I promised you that you would be fishers of men and the time has come to begin that task. The sea is the whole world and we have a lot to do, many cities and towns to visit, many souls to win, many sinners to forgive. Come with me to tell all the people we meet that God has come to save them. Let us go further and further, reach more and more people, and I will be with you, every day, until the end of the world.”
Christ wanted to associate men with his mission. The Church has as its only mission, the mission of Jesus. There is no other. We should remember that these days because we see the Church concerned about the physical health of people, which is an act of charity if you love your neighbor for the love of God, but the Church is not in the world mainly for that, in the same way that this was not the Lord's mission.
The Church is to lead men to communion with Christ and thus, in the Lord, find the only way that leads to salvation and true life. I want to end today with the teaching of Pope St. Paul VI commenting on the words of Jesus that we are reflecting on today. They remind us of who we are and of what the task is that God entrusts to us as His Body in the world and the universal sacrament of salvation: “The Church knows this. She has a vivid awareness of the fact that the Savior's words, "I must proclaim the Good News of the kingdom of God," apply in all truth to herself (…) We wish to confirm once more that the task of evangelizing all people constitutes the essential mission of the Church. It is a task and mission which the vast and profound changes of present-day society make all the most urgent. Evangelizing is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize, that is to say, in order to preach and teach, to be the channel of the gift of grace, to reconcile sinners with God, and to perpetuate Christ's sacrifice in the Mass, which is the memorial of His death and glorious resurrection.” (Evangelium Nuntiandi 14).
May God bless you all.
