Fr. Chris - Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Homily

"Experiencing Scripture"
Scripture is a unique form of writing, not just because it is considered the word of God, but because it always offers many different aspects of what they share with us. In today’s gospel, Christ’s healing of the leper, we could focus on Jesus’ great power as a divine being, able to heal with the touch of his hand. We could focus on the leper’s unshaking belief in Jesus as the Messiah, and that Jesus could heal him, even before he presented himself to the Lord from his exclusion from society. Maybe we could focus on the cultural background and religious hierarchy of the time which would expose Jesus as breaking the law because he had ‘touched’ someone with leprosy, an act strictly forbidden by rulings originating with Moses. Or maybe we could focus on the fact that by touching the leper, Jesus had made himself unclean in the sight of his community; or focus on the astonished crowd, bewildered, yet drawn to this man who could heal with the touch of his hand.


Yes, we can tease out, analyze, compare, evaluate, and decipher many various aspects of all bible scripture, the stuff of bible study, which can often provide unlimited rewards as we come to know God and Jesus better on our faith journey.


But, the most important aspect to examine is: what did the writer of the gospel truly want us to ‘experience’ and therefore to ‘learn’? Experience is the ‘key’ word.


Currently, we have in our country and in our own local community some of the finest schools and teachers. Our children are learning from the best! And we should take our hats off to them, especially in sincere gratitude for the gifted innovation and creativity they have shown in continuing to teach our children under possibly the most challenging and pressure-laden conditions of their careers. I am confident our students will remember their teachers with great affection, thanks, and admiration as they reflect in later adult years on just how much they did learn from their studies, but especially about how they lived and experienced life during C-19.


So, again, experience is key, because we still learn first from experience, emotions enhancing our reason, heart informing the head of its soul’s spiritual dimensions.


The gospel writer of Mark knew this. In fact, you can tell by its episodic nature, the quick twists and turns of events, and the attention given to the detailed reactions of the crowd, that the writer’s real, sincere desire was to bring us, living and breathing, ‘into’ the actions of the story. They wanted this story to be as real for us as possible, so we would ‘experience’ the event, and thus better ‘learn’ from it!


Possibly the earliest form of meditative prayer, lectio divina, which we looked at during Advent, is composed of four parts. The first part, reading a passage of scripture, is followed by the second part, a time for reflection on the reading. The Franciscans, and later, the Jesuits, expanded and developed this second part into what they still call today, “Biblical Meditation”, an Ignatian approach to prayer which encourages use of ‘imagination’, one of the greatest gifts God ever gave us.
In this practice, St. Ignatius instructs us to close our eyes after reading our passage, and allow our imaginations to pull us into the story or scene we have just read. We may be one of the disciples standing beside Jesus as he heals the leper, or we may be the leper himself, encountering our Lord, face-to-face. If we place ourselves as someone in the crowd, we might feel the closeness of the people pressing in on us, see their agitated faces, and hear their anxious breathing; feel the dust and grit gathering in our sandaled feet, pushing our way forward to see this man, Jesus, of such profound words and miraculous abilities, just inches away from us. We reach out to touch his hand, his shoulder, his robe, to receive healing for ourselves. In short, we ‘experience’ in person the nervous, joyful excitement of seeing our Lord.


This is how the gospel writer wants us to learn, and to learn from as near as possible to a personal experience with our Lord, because in this way we learn from Jesus himself what true compassion is, what true healing is, that we are called to do the same. He wants us to learn to be like Jesus and heal others in whatever way we can.


Salesian priest, Flor McCarthy says, “We are humbled by the generosity of Jesus who exposes the poverty of our own hearts. Yet, we are also elevated to greater compassion, as he challenges us to reach out to the wounded and excluded.”


As we near our coming Lenten journeys, let us take a favourite passage from the gospels, and enter into it with our imaginations, experience the joy and exhilaration of meeting Jesus face-to-face, and learn to be like Jesus from the Master himself.


– Rev Fr Christopher Tracey, Saint Joseph Parish, Saugeen Shores, Ontario