6th Sunday in Ordinary Time – B

The priests and the people of ancient Israel had two good reasons for excluding people with leprosy and other skin diseases from life in their community. First, they sought to stop the spread of contagious diseases, and second, they reflected their respect for the holiness of their acts of worship by specifying what it meant for a person to be considered pure and worthy to participate in the community's life of worship.

Jesus shows us an even more important value in His relationship with a leper in our gospel today, and that is the value of compassion.

The gospel tells us that Jesus was moved by compassion not only to speak to a man who should have been ostracized by the community, but Jesus also touched a man in a way that would have made Him impure in the eyes of those responsible for monitoring the purity of Temple worship.

Jesus taught by His example that compassion was a more important value than either self-preservation or ritual purity.

“Compassion” literally means to “suffer with” another, to feel their pain, to rejoice when those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep.

Our gospel clearly calls us to compassion – for the stranger, for the outcast, for the person who is sick, for those who mourn, for the poor, the homeless, the lonely, the bitter, the angry, the confused, the anxious, for anyone who knows any form of human suffering.

St. Paul teaches that whatever we do, we ought to do all for the glory of God.

As Jesus brought glory to God through His compassionate healing of the leper's disease and His restoration of the leper to life within the community of Israel , so may we take advantage of every opportunity that is given to us to give glory to God by the compassionate love and attention we give to others.

Thomas P. Ferguson
February 12, 2006