Optional Memorial of Saint Hilary, bishop and doctor of the Church

 Lectionary: 308

Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand,
touched the leper, and said to him, 
“I do will it. Be made clean.”
The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean.

The word immediately occurs twenty-eight times in the Gospel of Saint Mark. This oldest of the four gospels wants to impress upon first century congregations the crisis of Jesus's life, death, and resurrection. 

There was no time for dithering or delay.  The resurrection of Jesus was as real as a heart attack. We cannot wait for critics, quibblers, cavilers, and hair splitters. The hearers must Amen! the Good News now.

Congregations of the twenty-first century should hear the Gospel with the same urgency. We don't look up at the sky expecting the return of the Lord; we receive the Sacraments and know the Lord is here! He is standing at the gate and we answer his call. 

But a jaded weariness has set in so deep among Christians it is nearly systemic. Many people don't feel the imperative to worship; it is not a Sunday obligation for them. They consider religion a voluntary activity, a pastime, or hobby. 

Because religion sets the tone for everything else, that cool cynicism spreads to rest of our lives. Workers work for pay, vacation, and pensions while investors get someone else to do the work. The corporation's mission is for public consumption, and not a personal commitment to excellence. As indifference spreads like a contagious disease, divorce becomes a ready option for difficult moments in a marriage; and abortion, when a pregnancy is inconvenient or ill timed. Voting in local, state, and national elections -- which our military claims to fight and die -- draws only a fraction of the electorate. 

Families, spread apart by distances and the demands of employers, lose their power to guide and direct an individual's life. Friendships, temporary, plastic, and malleable, offer companionship without the constraints of family. 

Life itself becomes optional as people, dying of loneliness, choose various forms of suicide -- slow methods like alcoholism, smoking, and addictions, or faster methods of gunshot, poisoning, or medical assistance. Always, on the edge of our minds is the question, "Why should I not kill myself?" 

Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand,
touched the leper, and said to him, 
“I do will it. Be made clean.”

The touch of Jesus is not cool or distant; it is immediate, palpable, and insistent. His words suggest nothing; they command obedience, "Be made clean."

His outstretched hand heals us of the ironic distance we put around our faith in God. It falls on us with the sword of his mouth, a word of freedom binding us to him. He is the bond that can never be broken. 

See, I have today set before you life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the LORD, your God, which I am giving you today, loving the LORD, your God, and walking in his ways, and keeping his commandments, statutes and ordinances, you will live and grow numerous, and the LORD, your God, will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. 

If, however, your heart turns away and you do not obey, but are led astray and bow down to other gods and serve them, I tell you today that you will certainly perish; you will not have a long life on the land which you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. Deuteronomy 30:15-18