Archbishop of Sydney

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time

St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney
Lev 13:1-2, 44-46; 1 Cor 10:31-11:1; Mk 1:40-45

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
12/2/2006

The first and the last reading today are about leprosy and they spell out vividly what a terrible curse this was (and is), especially when it was incurable.
 
The harsh laws requiring isolation for the lepers, spelt out in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, were measures of community self defence, because the disease is very contagious.

It was the priest who had the unpleasant task of confirming that the disease had taken hold, an unusual situation for us who are blessed with a wonderful health service led by doctors and nurses.

Probably a priest was seen as someone who would give an accurate and just decision, be less liable to bullying or bribery.  More importantly though medicine was such a hit or miss business then that there were no clearly designated professional doctors, as far as I know.  Certainly there were midwives, but no hospitals and possibly priests or Levites also helped out as part-time medicine men.  Even in Western societies up until the last few hundred years surgeons also functioned mainly as local butchers!

In the nineteenth century we remember the story of Father Damien who went to live on the leper island of Molokai in Hawaii to help those desperate people.  He died there from the disease.  Today in Australia leprosy is rare, found only in some indigenous communities and occasionally in jails.

With this background we can better understand the faith of the leper who came to Our Lord “If you want to” he said “You can cure me”.  It is not simply a request, but an expression of deep and simple faith.  He had either seen Jesus curing others or was convinced by his goodness, presence and authority.  His faith is a good lesson for us.

Our Lord’s response is equally remarkable, although we are much more likely to take it for granted.  As the Son of God, Jesus takes us into the heart of the Trinitarian Godhead.  He who sees Jesus sees the Father.  Jesus felt sorry for this victim and insisted “Of course I want to help you”; then he cured the man.  God loves us and Our Lord shows what that means in practice.

The refrain for the psalm today could have been written by the leper who was cured. “I turn to you, Lord, in time of trouble and you fill me with the joy of salvation”.  Could we all make that claim?  Do we turn to God in prayer when we are in trouble?

If we never do this our faith is weak.  I regularly explain that the test for the existence of first level faith is whether we pray when we are in trouble.  A deeper faith means that we also thank God for his blessings and praise him for His goodness and greatness.

Our troubles, of course, are not only problems of health, work or finance.  We all experience spiritual trials, some of which we call sins.  Do we ask God quickly for forgiveness when we sin; or do we work to convince ourselves against the teaching of the Church that such and such is not a sin?  Another option is to acknowledge our guilt in our heart of hearts but work hard to block out the memory from our consciousness.  Another option short of this is to say to ourselves that we will put things right with God later, go to confession at some time in the future.

Somewhat surprisingly the psalm is more about God forgiving sins than about physical healing.  The psalmist acknowledged his sins, did not hide his guilt and was happy because his sin was remitted and his offence forgiven.

On Friday and Saturday I was in Adelaide for the Catholic World Day of the Sick, held in a different continent each year.  The meeting’s theme was the plight of the mentally ill, also discussed during the week at the meeting of the Prime Minister and Premiers.  In Australia we have slipped badly in this area because the programme of deinstitutionalization, the closing of the large mental hospitals, was not followed by adequate resources to look after these people in society.  Many, too many, are now not cared for by anyone, with a good number living on the streets and some of them in jail.  God has no hands but ours, because very few have Our Lord’s miraculous powers.  At another level we do not need miracles in our part of the world as they did in the past and as they still do where medical help is primitive.  Modern medicine can achieve cures that once were only miraculous.

In conclusion we should remember that the Church has always followed Our Lord’s example of helping the sick.  This is one reason why Christianity continues to survive and expand, because outsiders see serious Christians in action, helping and healing others.

At the health care conference Cardinal Barragan from the Vatican reported that there are more than 109,000 Catholic health care centres of every type throughout the world and 5,200 of these are hospitals.  In our province of Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and the Pacific Islands) there are 2,064 health care centres including 152 hospitals and 406 dispensaries.  The news is not all bad and we thank God for what good people do to help others.

God has no hands but ours to help and heal.  We should be proud of our Catholic hospitals and continue to urge our governments, who made tens of millions of dollars from the sale of metal institutions, to remedy the neglect of the patients.  They liberated into society, some of them only onto the streets.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen