6th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Feb.

15, 2015
(Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46; 1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1; Mark 1:40-45)
All of Leviticus 13 deals with various skin afflictions on the
human body and how the community should deal with them. The
Hebrew word tzara`at was translated into Greek as lepra and that in
turn came into Latin as leprosus culminating in English translations of
leprosy for every skin affliction under the sun. The technical word
for what we know as leprosy today is Hansens disease, named after its
discoverer, a Norwegian doctor, by the name of Gerhard Hansen.
Because of this, every time leprosy is mentioned in the Scriptures
we think of Hansens disease, when the Scriptures usually have
something else in mind. Leviticus includes any of a number of skin
problems, which if a priest inspects it and declares the person unclean,
requires the person to remain outside the camp until such time as a
priest would declare him freed of his affliction. The move was
cautionary lest everyone in the camp be afflicted. Tracing the origins
of this law to their lives as desert nomads, they would later be
excluded from the city of Jerusalem if they bore such uncleanness.
The skin afflictions were thought to be the result of some sin
committed by those afflicted. That meant that there was divine
retribution behind the afflictions. The priests were consulted, not so
that they would heal the people afflicted, but so that they would not
render others ritually unclean.
Cases were reported in rabbinic literature of a groom waiting until
the weeklong celebration of his wedding had taken place before
reporting the affliction to the priest so he would not miss out on his
own wedding. It was not considered leprous until the priest declared
it so, so if it was never reported to the priest it was not technically a
disease. The exclusion from the community resembles the punishment
for penitents in the early church who used to have to sit in front of the
church, begging alms for the poor until they were reconciled to the
Church.

Some would regard the divorced-and-remarried-withoutannulment exclusion from the sacraments as the same kind of putting
people outside the camp. Christ healed the afflicted and sent them
on their way. This must be what Pope Francis has in mind as he
encourages the Church to address this critical problem for good people
who simply entered into bad marriages.
The burden of divorce and all the pain that comes with it is all the
more complicated when marriages have to go through the often
humiliating and more painful reminders of what they left when people
divorced. People seeking annulments must first describe the acts of
infidelity or spousal abuse, both physical and mental, which
sometimes played out over many years. Then they have to write it all
down. Often enough they then must appear before the Marriage
Tribunal to repeat it again. Objective observers might well regard this
as cruel and unusual punishment.
In Sundays Gospel Jesus is approached by the leprous beggar
who asks to be made clean. Jesus cleans the man first and then tells
him to tend to the legalities: Go show yourself to the priest. Surely
we can find a better way to minister to people rendered unclean by
the divorce label, than to put them in the penalty box (exclusion from
the sacraments) without any idea of how long the penalty is to last.
Paul says to the Corinthians in Sundays selection that we should
do all for the glory of God. The ultimate glory of God is revealed in
the Son. Acting like the Son by doing as he commanded is to reflect
the glory of God. Imitating Christ by showing mercy and compassion
is the fulfillment of the commandments.
Fr. Lawrence Hummer