6th Sunday of Ordinary Time (15.02.15)
What Leprosy?
“A leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said, “If you wish, you can make me clean.”
Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.”
The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean.” (Mark 1.40)
On the 6th Sunday of the Year we read this extract from Mark’s Gospel. For Europeans leprosy is unknown and, therefore, unimaginable. By contrast, worshippers in Angola, Brazil, the Central African Republic, India, China, Madagascar, Nepal, Tanzania, the Congo and Mozambique, to list just some affected countries, will know that leprosy remains a scourge.
According to official reports received from 115 countries and territories, the global registered prevalence of leprosy in early 2013 stood at 189,018 cases. The number of new cases detected during 2012 was 232,857.
Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, occurs among the poorest and most marginalized peoples. Children are particularly prone. While not very contagious, the leprosy bacterium is believed to be transmitted through respiratory droplets. It is curable with treatment but lost limbs do not regrow.
Initial infection displays no symptom and can remain undetected for between 5 and 20 years. It is a ‘sleeper’ illness stealthily establishing itself within the human body. Eventually, its presence is betrayed when a victim ceases to feel physical pain in one or more extremity such as fingers, toes, nose, ears. A loss of feeling can lead to repeated injury resulting in a loss of extremities. Associated symptoms include overall weakness and poor eyesight. That leprosy is referred to in the Bible tells us that one or other of its forms has affected humanity for thousands of years.
This Gospel speaks clearly to the peoples of leprosy-infected areas. Is there a message for Europe where the disease is almost unknown? Metaphorically speaking there is. We can draw a comparison between leprosy, a communicable contagion capable of living undetected within its host, and the corruption, increasingly being revealed, that has numbed the spiritual and allowed a substratum of evil to fester for decades within many levels of the institutional Church.
It was the now newly canonized Pope John XXlll who in 1964 said: “The Church must shake off the dust the Empire”. Announcing the calling of the Second Council of the Vatican, Pope John XXlll said: “Surely it is high time, and surely it would be to everyone’s advantage to ‘shake off the dust of the Empire that has gathered since Constantine’s day on the throne of St. Peter’” (Congar 1964: 127). Fr Joseph Mattam SJ subsequently commented: “These words spoken by the great John XXIII will continue to challenge the Church leaders as long as they do not give up the ways of Constantine’s Roman Empire.”
The Emperor Constantine, Roman Emperor AD306 – 337, became a Christian and, effectively, subsumed Christianity into his empire. His validation institutionalised the Church thereby distorting, infecting, the Church as founded by Jesus Christ. The Christian Church acquiesced in this new found release from hostile and violent persecution. To quote Joseph Mattam again: “From around the 4th century Church leaders took on the ways of the Empire and those who were to be servants of the community began to be called and lived as Lords, Eminences, Excellencies, Holiness, etc. It is so shameful to look at these titles, forms of dress and the ways of life of the leaders of the Disciples of Christ, the foot-washing God. With the conversion of Constantine, and other emperors, the practices of the empire passed into the Church. One cannot plumb the evil that has entered the Church through Church leaders blindly following the pattern of the empire.” Constantine honoured the pope and his court with an emperor’s adornments and insignia, possibly from the best of motives.
Pope Francis, in a relatively short time, is demonstrably furthering Pope St. John XXlll’s call to “shake off the dust’. He has speeded up the dismantling of centuries of corrosive behaviour within the Church. Fr Mattam again: “This Pope gives me hope” is one of the stickers that are being sold. I am very grateful that he is beginning to lead the Church back to what Jesus wanted, both by his teachings and example. In Evangelii Gaudium he says: “when we speak of sacramental power we are in the realm of function, not that of dignity or holiness…our dignity derives from baptism, which is accessible to all. … In the Church, functions do not favour the superiority of some vis-a-vis the others. Indeed, a woman, Mary is more important than the bishops”.
Last November Pope Francis was invited to address European Parliamentarians in Strasbourg. He described Europe as “ … giving the impression of being somewhat elderly and haggard with weariness and ageing like a grandmother, no longer fertile and vibrant”.
Pope Francis was inviting Europeans to journey with him, as he leads the Church, to Christ saying in the words of the leper in this Sunday’s Gospel: “If you wish, you can make me clean.”