Thursday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary 308

A leper came to him and kneeling down begged him and said,

"If you wish, you can make me clean."

Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched the leper, and said to him,

"I do will it. Be made clean."

Before the Second Vatican Council, the scripture readings at Mass often began with the words, in illo tempore ("in those days"). Oddly many of our stories today begin with, "In the old days before...." Before the social media, the Internet, the computer, the atomic bomb, electricity...." You know, those old days, "when your grandmother was a girl." That peculiar invocation -- "in the old days" -- has a doctrinal ring about it, an assumed understanding: "The times have changed."

When we read and interpret gospel stories we sometimes begin with the understanding, "Times have changed for the better. We don't need God to heal leprosy, blindness, madness (or whatever) anymore. We have medicines for that!"

Another statement accompanies that proud assertion, "We don't need God's pity. Humankind is not pitiful!" The secular credo still loudly recites Invictus​: "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."

In today's scripture reading, we hear that Jesus had pity on the leper. On another occasion, when the crowd followed him into the wilderness, he had pity on the people for they were like sheep without a shepherd. His compassion mirrors the kindness of God who heard the Hebrews' cry of anguish in Egypt.

Despite our brazen denial, we still need God's mercy; we cannot save ourselves. Even the most idealistic government system -- democracy -- fails and injustice seeps through our windows, doors and walls as surely as Harvey's flood in Houston. A finely tuned economic system collapses and children go hungry. Elaborate computer programs are used to serve criminal regimes. 

The creators of these wonder drugs, marvelous machines and idealistic ideologies intended to do good. But they could not factor Original Sin out of their schemes. In many cases they never imagined someone might use them to do harm. 

And yet we should keep trying. Like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill, we must strive to reform and reshape our systems to serve both justice and mercy until the Day the Lord himself finishes the work. We can do no less. 

Times have changed, yes, but not in any important way. We still need God. We will always need God to stoop down from heaven and see our plight; Jesus to offer his agony from a cross; and the Holy Spirit to show us what we must do. 

At times the right thing will seem as comical as Philip's chasing after the eunuch in a chariot, as absurd as Jesus' invitation to Peter, "Come;" as hopeless as the Savior's advance upon Jerusalem. 

We have only to look beyond the sanitized boundaries of our preselected visions to see the hungry, the homeless, the helpless and the pathetic whose only hope is God. 

The starving Lazarus lay at the door of Dives, in open view of his banquet table. He is still there, in the refugee camps, on the other side of the thin blue line, hidden in plain site. We still need a Savior.