Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
February 15, 2015
Dear Parishioners,
I was standing in the supermarket checkout line the other day and there they were…those magazines…staring at me. One certainly could get an inferiority complex looking at all those young, attractive and trim models and superstars. None of us in line came anywhere close to looking like them. In fact, a woman told me recently that since she turned 40, bank tellers and cashiers don’t even look at her anymore. She says that while conducting her transactions they look over her shoulder at the younger people in line behind her. In our society, to paraphrase Vince Lombardi, “looks aren’t everything…they’re the only thing.”
Jesus’ love exhibited in today’s Gospel, offers us something different from the usual way we are treated and judged. We are accepted, not because our skin is perfect or our spirits unblemished, but because Jesus has entered our human condition and reaches out to touch and heal us. He is doing that each time we come to Eucharist. There he touches us, making us clean and acceptable to God, restoring us to healed relationships with one another. Yet, so often, we find it difficult to do the same with people whom we come into contact.
I remember years ago when I began working as a hospital chaplain at Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto, it was extremely difficult for me to get really close to a patient’s bed. This was most difficult when the patient was an infant in the ICU, you know, with all the machines and tubes and stuff. I was afraid that I would disconnect something if I got too close. So, I would pray “from a distance” which proved to be impractical the first time I was called to do an emergency baptism. One day, however, I was given a gift that transformed all of my discomfort in those situations. The person who gave me the gift was a young boy named Sean. Sean had multiple disabilities. Some people thought that Sean didn’t know what was going on around him, but it was obvious to me that he did, even if he couldn’t communicate in what we call “a normal way.” One of Sean’s means of communication was hugging. He always had to have a hug. I hadn’t seen Sean for several days, but late one afternoon there he was sitting in the hallway strapped in his wheelchair. It was obvious that he recently had surgery: his head was shaved from his ears forward and the incision went from temple to temple, held closed with hundreds of staples. It looked like they had put a zipper around the front of his head, and it looked very painful. Sean’s eyes were still swollen from the surgery and he could barely open them. His face was puffy as well. And he had a towel on his chest to catch the drool that dribbled out of the corner of his mouth. As soon as he saw me come around the corner, he raised his arms into the air—he wanted his hug! I looked around hoping that he was reaching out to someone else, but his invitation was clearly for me. I approached him slowly and then bent down and gave him a hug. That hug was a moment of grace for me, a gift I will never forget. In that moment, all discomfort I had with being close to someone who was ill or injured or with disabilities just dissolved. In that moment, that one hug transformed me. I am grateful that this encounter happened sooner rather than later for it certainly better equipped me for the ministry to which God has called me.
People with leprosy are “un-huggable” according to Leviticus. They are shunned from the community because of what they have or what they don’t have. Who are the “un-huggables” in our lives? Who are the people that we banish because of what they have or don’t have? What they do or don’t do? Who are those people that we judge unworthy or “not as good as”? Jesus shows us that nobody is outside of God’s love and compassion. “’I do will it,’ Jesus says. ‘Be cured!’” Who in your life needs the healing touch of Jesus today?
Fr. Leonard+