HOMILY WEEK 12 05 – Year II
Faith in Jesus as Son of God and Experiencing Jesus as the Messiah:
Memorial of St. Irenaeus
(2 Kg 25:1-12; Ps 137; Mt 8:1-4)
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Does the statement, “Jesus worked miracles, but he was not a miracle worker,” make sense to you?
The gospel today invites us to believe in Jesus as Son of God and Messiah, and to come to him for forgiveness and healing.
The assertion that Jesus was not a miracle worker, even though he performed miracles, does make sense if one considers that all the miracles Jesus worked were not for mere show, but served the deeper purpose of revealing who he was as Son of God and the Messiah. Looking over the miracles Jesus performed, one becomes aware he never healed a toothache or appendicitis. His miracles all involved the senses or giving the fullness of life – sight, hearing, speaking, walking, raising the dead or as in the case of this gospel, the healing of leprosy. So, in that sense, Jesus was not a miracle worker performing to dazzle – he always healed to reveal.
Examining this gospel more closely, we see that revelatory function in operation. First, we are told Jesus had come down from the mountain. That was a hint that there had been a theophany, an encounter with God on the mountain top, and that Jesus was divine, the Son of God.
Second, we are told great crowds followed him. That is a hint that Jesus was the Messiah, whose mission involved gathering all the nations to himself. The people were crowding around him in Galilee, rather than the temple in Jerusalem, the focal point of the religion and spirituality of Judaism at that time, where God was thought to dwell in the Holy of Holies. This shift, from the temple to Jesus, is an underlying theme of the gospels, suggesting he was the new temple, bringing in a new order, as the new Adam and the Messiah.
The leper, fully aware of his painful condition that made him unclean and unworthy to participate in the religious life of the community, let alone have any normal relationship with other human beings, humbly knelt before Jesus with faith in his power to heal him, which was not happening through the temple cult of animal sacrifice. This, too, was part of that shift to a dynamic spirituality effecting real change and healing in people’s lives through faith in Jesus.
Then Jesus stretches out his hand and, horror of horrors, actually touches the leper, an act strictly forbidden by Mosaic Law and one which rendered Jesus ritually unclean. In fact, he would join the leper in also being unable to participate in the life of the temple. The present pandemic with its advisory to remain two metres from any other person, along with self-isolating and lockdowns, can give us a little glimpse into what the leper was experiencing. It is like all of us during the pandemic had to treat others as possible lepers, or keep in mind that we could be the ones carrying the virus and able to infect others, thus becoming like the leper ourselves.
This daring action of reaching out and touching the leper on the part of Jesus proclaims boldly that he was above the Law, above the Torah, which was the ultimate authority for the religious leaders. It meant he was God, divine, the Messiah. The fact that the leper was healed immediately attests to that fact.
The command of Jesus to the leper to not say anything about the healing links with what in the Gospel of Mark is called the “Messianic secret.” People would not understand the meaning of these miracles, and with their mistaken notion of what the messiah would be like, would try to capitalize on this miraculous power and make him a political figure who might drive out the Romans – a far cry from the true mission of Jesus as the Messiah to redeem the world and inaugurate the kingdom of God, not a worldly kingdom.
Finally, Jesus tells the former leper to show himself to the priests in Jerusalem and offer the gift commanded by the Mosaic Law, as a testimony to them. That would suggest to the religious leaders that Jesus was truly the fulfillment of the Mosaic Law, the one who would bring their religious establishment closer to its true function of being an icon of God on earth, a God who is love, mercy, compassion, forgiveness and totally non-violent.
As the Messiah, Jesus had a two-fold mission – to redeem and sanctify, to forgive and heal, not to wage war and dominate. Our response is not to try to make him into a political figure, but to come to him with humble faith and self-awareness, as the leper did, for forgiveness and healing. We need forgiveness for our sins, for our hurtful actions we committed when we acted out of our painful emotions instead of dealing with them. But we also should come to Jesus for healing of our sinfulness, that which made us sin – precisely those painful emotions such as anger and bitterness, as well as our negative attitudes such as false pride, stubborn self-will and self-righteousness. Jesus is the only one who can truly heal our personal and spiritual leprosy.
And today, the Church invites us to honor St. Irenaeus, someone who lived this gospel as an early disciple of Jesus. He was born in Asia Minor, probably between 130 and 135, and went to Lyons as a missionary priest sometime before 177. By 199 he was bishop of Lyons. Through his writings, we know he was a disciple of St. Polycarp, who was himself a disciple of St. John the Evangelist; thus, Irenaeus was in the direct line of the disciples. His writings refuting heresies helped lay the foundations of Christian theology and give us a window on the early Church. He fought against the Gnostics (elitism and matter is bad) and Valentinians (secret tradition). Perhaps his most important contribution was his assertion that creation is not sinful by nature, but rather distorted by sin. Irenaeus started the tradition of biblical scholarship and played a decisive role in fixing the canon of the NT by going through all the books extent and giving reasons for or against its canonicity.
The Eucharist can be described as God’s love reaching out and touching us, overcoming all propriety and unabashedly hugging us, wrapping us with forgiveness and healing. May our celebration not only bring us that forgiveness and healing, but also empower us to go out and tell everyone about what faith in Jesus as the Son of God and the Messiah can accomplish in our lives.
