Father Papesh’s sermon
Kissing the Leper
Leprosy is a dread disease. One kind of leprosy leaves the victim covered with thick, brown, ulcerated pustules which ooze, smell and multiply, disfiguring the person completely. The other kind of leprosy begins the same way, but the hardening of the skin and its ulceration kill the nervous system. Eventually fingers, toes or even a nose, hand, or foot fall off the body. The result of the disease is madness and a slow, agonizing death. In the ancient Jewish world leprosy was called “the living death,” and throughout history the leper has remained a symbol of all that is contagious, distorted, disfigured and corrupt in human nature.
According to his biographers, Saint Francis of Assisi had a particularly poignant encounter with a leper. Nikos Kazantsakis, in his book Saint Francis,* adds color and texture to the historical facts.
As Kazantzakis tells the story, Francis hated and feared lepers more than anything else. While traveling to Ravenna just after renouncing his family inheritance, Francis has a dream in which God appears to him and asks Francis to embrace and kiss a leper. He is terrified by the dream. The next morning, as he and his companion Brother Leo walk along, they hear the sound of a bell in the distance warning that a leper is approaching. Francis turns white and stops on the road. As the sound of the bell grows closer and closer, a shudder runs through Francis’ body. Then Francis darts down the road, throws himself upon the startled leper, embraces him and kisses him on the mouth. He then covers the leper with his own cloak and begins walking with him toward Ravenna.
As the city gates loom before Francis and his companions, Francis pulls back the leper’s cloak … and he disappears. “Did you see, Brother Leo?” Francis exclaims. “Did you understand?” Francis trembles, then blurts out, “All lepers, cripples and sinners[, Brother Leo]: if you kiss them on the mouth they all … become Christ!”
In today’s Gospel, in a rare picture of deep emotion, Jesus is moved to the depths of his bowels – as the Greek says – out of compassion for the leper and in anger at his leprosy. Jesus reaches out and touches the leper, embracing the leper’s uncleanness, becoming unclean himself. Within the touch, the leper – symbol of contagion, corruption, distortion and sin – the leper is cleansed. The message of this healing is that in Jesus the unholy is made holy, the unclean is made clean. In Jesus, no category of people, no class of human beings, is beyond the reach of grace, healing and forgiveness. In Jesus, no one is abandoned, no one let go.
This Gospel text calls us, in response to Jesus’ example and Francis of Assisi’s, to embrace and kiss the lepers of our lives.
We all know lepers, individuals and groups who are pushed to the fringe, who are hated, ignored, dreaded or feared because they are considered different, or dangerous, or distorted, or immoral. And, for the most part, the lepers we know in our lives are the lepers we ourselves create. For some of us the leper is the homosexual or the child abuser, the drunk, the drug user, or the prostitute. For others of us the leper is the Black, the Native American, the Asian, the immigrant, or the person from the Middle East. For yet others of us the leper is the senile, people with disabilities, the disfigured, or the men and women we call “street people.” All of these people are victims of the circumstances of their births, their upbringing and their life events. We make them victims of our society. All of these people are largely shut out of life’s mainstream. All of these people are the lepers the Scriptures call us to embrace and kiss.
Today’s Scriptures call us to embrace and kiss all those in our midst who are victims of physical or moral weakness, and whose weaknesses, for whatever reasons, cannot be corrected. They call us to embrace and kiss them in consolation so as to build up their spirit. The Scriptures call us to embrace and kiss all of the burdened in our midst. They call us to embrace them in generosity and kiss them in love, placing ourselves at their service. Today’s Scriptures call us to cast aside our bitterness, anger and harsh words, our slander and malice of every kind, and to embrace our lepers with kindness and compassion, and kiss them with forgiveness and healing, just as God has forgiven and healed us in Christ.
The Gospel proclaims to us that Jesus cares passionately for the lepers among us. He cares tenderly for them as persons. He is angry at what they suffer. He extends them his touch in healing and compassion, in consolation and forgiveness, making their uncleanness in our eyes and in the eyes of our society his own. And Jesus’ embrace of the leper – his physically taking-on their uncleanness and then relieving it utterly – calls us to live out every day of our lives the lesson that Francis of Assisi learns on the road: “All lepers, cripples and sinners[, Brother Leo]: if you kiss them on the mouth they all … become Christ!”
Who are the lepers in your life? Fr. Michael Papesh