when did God last change you?

Homily

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time BI

St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas

14 February 2021

AMDG +JMJ +m

This week, five fraternities were banned from campus for partying during a pandemic, and putting the community at risk.  They broke the rules, and received consequences.  Many of these men are members of the St. Lawrence Center.

I'm not going to judge these men or KU's response.  I do want to note, however, that the more things change, the more things stay the same.

This time, it's not leprosy.  It's COVID-19.  Yet the leprosy of Gospel times and our current pandemic bear so many resemblances.  You think modern medicine has eliminated the need for quarantines, distancing to limit exposure, and rules to keep the community safe?  Hardly!  The same rules in place for leprosy 2000 years ago are all in play today.

Like the fraternity party, in today's Gospel rules are broken!  The leper wants to go to church.  He can't live without being part of a worshipping community.  For him, life means right relationship with God and his community, expressed in public worship.  Good for him!  I wish we all saw such meaning in going to Church.  I get asked all the time if people will come back to Mass after the pandemic.  I honestly don't know.  I know there is no going back, only going forward.  I also know if we're afraid of losing people, in many ways we have already lost them.

That's not the case with this leper.  Banned from the Jerusalem temple, not be a county health order but by the religious authorities in charge of keeping worship safe, the leper breaks quarantine and instead goes right up  and kneels before the new meeting place between God and man, the new temple which is Jesus himself.  

Jesus makes it worse.  Instead of enforcing the rule that this man should declare himself unclean from a distance, Jesus touches him.  Imagine doing this during COVID-19.  Bypassing all rules, all PPE, and just touching someone deliberately.  Jesus in so doing shows that He has come to take our infirmities to Himself.  He makes Himself unclean so that the leper might receive healing, cleansing and saving grace.

The leper then breaks Jesus' rule to shut up about it.  The result is that while he is restored to right relationship, Jesus gets kicked off campus.  He can't go in town, or near the temple, but has to go to the desert to create some space.

When is the last time God touched you in such a way you couldn't shut up about it?  Did it happen in confession?  The sacrament is the spiritual parallel of the Gospel story we just heard.  After declaring ourselves unclean, and unable to contribute to the unity of the worshipping community, a priest speaks for Jesus in telling us He wills to make us clean, and restore us to full communion with God and each other.

If not confession, when did God last touch you?  I am touched right now by the men in RCIA who like the leper in today's Gospel have decided they can't live without being a full member of the Catholic communion and laying hold of salvation by touching Jesus in the sacraments.  When everyone expects this generation of college students to all be lost and cut off forever, these men have gone the opposite direction, and proclaim that to live means to go to church, and to be physically in communion with Jesus.

That's my God moment, that I want to share with the whole world.  What's yours?