The 4th Grade Leper
Cathy was the fourth grade leper of St. Charles Borromeo School. These many decades later, I can’t recall the reasons why we made her so. Perhaps she wasn’t willing to play the game of “fitting-in;” it certainly didn’t help she had an obsession with cats.
Nonetheless, we ostracized her. Called her names to her face and behind her back. “Meowed” as she walked by. The girls ignored her completely and most of the boys mocked her unmercifully. Nine years old, she had no one to call her a friend. By the end of that school year, Cathy had a meltdown and never returned to St. Charles again. We chased away the leper. We won.
Except we didn’t.
How broken is the human heart that it can cause others to experience such pain and isolation? How much hate and fear can we hold onto in order to make lepers out of those who are different – or even worse, to isolate and shut-out those who have hurt us or made us feel uncomfortable?
I picture in my mind’s eye the image of 9-year-old Cathy, so very much alone and carrying as hidden wounds the names and pain we caused her. She is the leper in today’s Gospel, crying out to Christ: “Heal me. Love me.” And of course Jesus says in response to her broken heart: “It’s the sole reason why I came – to heal you and to love you.”
There are so many lepers all around us, many of whom we see and know: the mentally ill; those living in poverty on our streets; the elderly and physically challenged that make us feel so uncomfortable sometimes. Then there are those who we make lepers: the ones who love and vote and think differently than us. Those who anger us and have caused us to feel pain.
Often, we walk around as lepers ourselves – by our own choices or made so by others.
Many lepers suffer in silence. Some sit beside us every day and we don’t even realize it.
Yet have no doubt: Jesus knows the way in which we carry our leprosy: he also knows the reasons why we make others feel the pain of isolation. And time and again, he keeps crying out: “Let me heal you.”
But we must make the effort to come to him. As lepers, we have to be the ones to summon the courage and humility – embrace the grace – to seek forgiveness through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. And, equally important, we are empowered to extend the grace of healing to those we’ve made lepers, too. If we don’t, we never really get healed of our own leprosy.
There’s no coincidence whatsoever that the leper had to show himself to the Jewish priest who would be the one to declare him clean. Yes, Jesus was the ultimate divine healer, but the priest of the Temple had to do two ritual acts in order for the diseased man to return among the living – to walk among the others without fear:
The Levitical (Jewish) priest had to speak words of absolution over him and then sprinkle him with the blood of a sacrificed lamb.
Lasting cleansing couldn’t happen until these things occurred, and how incredible the connection to us: the Lamb of God who shed his blood on the Cross for all of us, whose final words of absolution were spoken over all of us for all time, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Jesus became the Leper so that we no longer have to be.
As disciples of Jesus Christ – as ones who learn and listen and follow the Crucified One – we must offer the same healing grace to ourselves and to those we make lepers. He’s asking us to be set free so that he can use us to help the others.
A few years back, while hearing First Confessions at a parish out-of-state, a father came to me and pointed to his son, sitting in a pew nearby and crying. “Father, my boy is really nervous, so I am going to pretend to go to Confession and show him that there is nothing to be scared of.”
I looked at the Dad and said: “How about we do more than ‘pretend?’ How long has it been since your last Confession?”
The Dad then proceeded to share with the Lord – through me, the priest – the decades of lukewarm faith and missed grace. The sins that weighed him down and those that affected his family and friends. What he carried was so incredibly heavy and painful, that when he finally brought it to the Light of healing, he himself started to cry.
Tears that started from shame, no doubt. But as the sacrament touched his leprosy, they became tears that spontaneously pour forth from a sorrow touched by love.
The father heard the words of absolution and allowed the Blood of the Lamb to cleanse his wounded soul. He stood up unfettered and walked back to his son, who watched from his pew the entire time with eyes open to the power of God at work in his own Dad. When the 8-year-old approached me afterwards, as he sat down, he offered these words: “I’m not afraid now. My Dad showed me that this was going to be okay.”
And it was. It always is when we bring the leprosy to him. Jesus Christ who knew not sin became sin so as to set us free. How could we say ‘no’ to such a gift? To the greatest gift the world has ever known?
The last day Cathy was with us at school before her parents enrolled her elsewhere, I clearly remember watching her stand along the chain-link fence which separated the playground/parking lot from the parish cemetery. She spent her last recess with us looking at headstones.
I am sure Cathy felt dead inside, like those in the grave on the other side of the fence. We made her so. If only one of us had the courage and grace in our 9-year-old hearts to go to her, stand beside her in her pain and suffering. We didn’t.
Jesus was there, though. Unseen, of course, but holding Cathy in the pain we caused. He was slowly healing her. His Cross was taking on her suffering and isolation, and in some sacred way unknown to us, letting her know she was both loved and lovable.
May all of us who have known the leprosy of being unwanted and unseen, unloved and made to feel unclean, may we run to the One who heals us and sets us free so that, in love, we can offer the same for others who know the same pain we have placed before the Cross.
And Jesus said: “I do will it. Be made clean.”