Leprosy is Rampant

Published in ILLUMINATION

Leprosy is Rampant

A Rose by any Other Name…

Yesterday, in every Catholic, Episcopal, and in hundreds of other churches worldwide, we all heard the same reading. It was the familiar story of Jesus healing the man with leprosy.

“A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees. “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured. [Mark 1:40]”

After listening to the reading and reflecting on the priest’s homily of the passage, I realized, with new clarity, the larger meaning of this miracle. I recently completed Abraham Vergheses’ Covenant of Water, which enlarged my understanding of the disease. Leprosy has existed in every culture for thousands of years. With no cure, lepers (such an awful term) carried the lowest social stigma. Historically, since modern medicine — a short time — that the status of the diseased changed. But has it?

Interchange the term leper with the term “marginalized.” The lepers/marginalized are still outcast, shunned by society. It’s the words that have changed. Both include anyone who lives in the margins of our towns, cities, and countries.

What? You ask, who are they? There are numerous forms of leprosy today, maybe more than ever. The obvious populations are those excluded due to race, age, physical ability, sexual orientation, those with mental health issues and addiction, finally, those in poverty — be it economic, intellectual, or spiritual… all who suffer from discrimination.

The other “lepers” are the faces we turn away from daily: that sun-burnt woman with the limp, using her grocery cart to hold her belongings, to lean on for support; the man holding the cardboard sign reading “U.S. Vet, anything helps;” the old guy, who takes fifteen minutes to park at the grocery, as we curse, muttering “he shouldn’t be driving;” and the woman who drinks too much, lives alone, who has pretend conversations on her phone with her family who shunned her. I could go on, ad nauseam.

I believe The Church is us, the people are the living body of the Church. It’s not merely a place to go on Sundays. In the coming Lenten season and beyond, seek them! The lepers — serve those who are outcast, lonely, hungry, naked, sick, unemployed, persecuted. See the Lord in the leper. Find God in their faces before they turn away in shame.