Quinquagesima Next before February 13 & 14, 2021 Homily for the Holy Sacrifice of the of St. Thomas More Catholic Parish celebrated at St. Joseph 116 Theodore Street Scranton, PA 18508 Mark 1:40-45

I read an article recently about the smallest county in the United States, Kalawao County, Hawaii, where St. Marianne Cope and St. Damien of Molokai undertook their ministry to those afflicted with Hanson’s disease, the leprosy we read about in today’s Old Testament lesson and Gospel. Kalawao County’s isolation is suited for the leper colony it became in the 1860’s, as even today the only land access to it is a mule trail through cliffs a quarter-mile high.

When we think about the sick people who lived there from around 1865 to the middle of the twentieth century, it’s important to remember that their disease was not a moral condition. The state removed the people with Hanson’s disease and placed them on Molokai, not because they had done anything wrong, but because their condition was a threat to public health. This is the same basis for the separation we read about in the Old Testament lesson from the Book of Leviticus. To be designated unclean was, in the case of illness, not a declaration of sinfulness, but rather isolation imposed by God for the purpose of sparing other people from the ravages of leprosy.

Like the people of Kalawao County one hundred years ago, lepers among the Jews were cut off from the wider society. Nevertheless, they could still live lives of personal sanctity if they obeyed the prescriptions placed upon them. They weren’t moral reprobates, whom people avoided because bad company ruins good morals. Indeed, as St. Damien De Veuster demonstrated, lepers could live lives of heroic virtue, pouring themselves out for the good of their fellow man and to the glory of God. They just did so among a smaller group of people, since the size of their community was determined only by how many people had the same disease.

So while lepers were not to be automatically considered notorious sinners, neither were these people who had been legally ostracized instant saints by virtue of their disease. This reality we see amply demonstrated in today’s Gospel. mercifully healed the man who approached our Lord and had even knelt before Jesus. However, when Jesus instructed the former leper not to say anything to anyone, the beneficiary of this incredible miracle “…went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news.” In other words, the healed man was totally disobedient to the command of God Himself.

His disobedience is instructive. If in the past the tendency was to conflate being ritually unclean with being morally suspect, though there exists no basis to make this association, we in our day make a different mistake. We tend to associate victimhood—whether it be by disease, from crime, or even because of prejudice—we associate those victims with moral righteousness. That is, we make the false assumption that because one is the victim in some measure of injustice, he is therefore just. Or that because he has suffered, he is our moral superior and we can trust he will not by his actions or his words cause others to suffer.

Such an assumption is, of course, demonstrably false. Because of what the healed leper did, St. Mark tells us, “…Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in the country.” We must ask, how many invalids in towns across Galilee were deprived of Jesus’ healing touch as a result of this man’s disobedience? How many people were deprived of hearing the Good News preached to them because the cleansed leper did not do what Jesus said? For all the suffering the man endured, as desirous as he was for healing, obedience to the Lord’s commands was not one of the virtues he had fostered.

We see historically that this is true of oppressed peoples, even as it is of individuals. Three hundred years of being demonized by the English didn’t turn all the Irish into terrorists, but too many Irishmen learned the wrong lessons from their occupiers and were then not averse to killing civilians in their quest for independence. The same is true of the Haitian people who committed genocide against all those of French descent in their own war of independence. The point is, just because we were victimized does not imply we are righteous or that all our deeds can be justified before God.

As we enter this week into the season of Lent, it will be helpful to remember the counter example of the cleansed leper, as we do our examination of conscience and prepare for our Lenten confession. We have received a great gift in having been freed from the oppression of sin and its consequences, eternal death. When we find ourselves on the receiving end of oppression, we can remember that the Lord’s Passion and death occurred precisely because of the choices we have made at different times throughout our lives to cause others to suffer or we remain indifferent to the suffering of the most vulnerable among us. When we’re feeling like victims whose anger and lashing out are justified because of how we have been wronged, we ought to gaze upon the true and spotless victim, reminded that the answer He gave to oppression was not to lash out, but to forgive. The oppressions we suffer are opportunities, opportunities to imitate our Lord in the way of graciousness and perfection. After all, St. Damien of Molokai and St. Marianne Cope went to Hawaii not just to bring company to people living in isolation but even more the healing that only Jesus can bring through the forgiveness of sins.