14 February 2027 · Syro-Malankara Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Latin Rite · Syro-Malabar Rite · മലയാളം
“Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” Luke 5:12
The Sundays of the Great Fast in our tradition follow Christ the physician: the leper, the paralytic, the Canaanite woman's daughter, the bent woman, the man born blind. Lent is a season of healing. Today a man “covered with leprosy” falls on his face before Jesus and says: “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” Jesus “stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, ‘I do choose. Be made clean.’ Immediately the leprosy left him.”
Leprosy in the Bible was more than a disease. The leper had to live outside the camp, cry “Unclean!”, and could touch no one. Jesus does what no one would do: he touches him. The Law said that touching a leper made you unclean; with Jesus, the opposite happens: his touch makes the leper clean. This is what Lent offers us: the touch of Christ on the parts of our life we hide from others.
Naaman, the proud Syrian general, was told by Elisha to wash seven times in the Jordan. At first he was angry: was this not too simple? But when he obeyed, “his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.” Healing requires humility. The leper in the Gospel knelt; Naaman went down into the river. In Lent we kneel in confession and go down into the waters of repentance.
Isaiah prays: “O LORD, be gracious to us; we wait for you. Be our arm every morning, our salvation in the time of trouble.” Jesus himself, after healing the leper, “would withdraw to deserted places and pray.” Healing and prayer go together. Let us bring to Christ in this Fast whatever in us is unclean, and hear him say: “I do choose. Be made clean.”
Theme: “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.”
The Great Fast leads us through Sundays of healing. The first is the leper: a man shut out of community, who dares to come to Jesus. Leprosy is an image of sin, which isolates us from God and from one another.
“He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.” Leviticus 13:46
“There was a man covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he bowed with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.”” Luke 5:12
Apply: Name the sin that isolates you, and bring it humbly to the Lord.
“As for me, I said, “O LORD, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against you.”” Psalm 41:4
“Then Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, “I do choose. Be made clean.” Immediately the leprosy left him.” Luke 5:13
Apply: Reach out this week to someone others avoid: the sick, the shamed, the lonely.
“So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.” 2 Kings 5:14
““Go,” he said, “and show yourself to the priest, and, as Moses commanded, make an offering for your cleansing, for a testimony to them.”” Luke 5:14
Apply: Make a good confession during this Great Fast.
What the leper said, we can say: “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.”
Christ chooses. Let us come to him, let him touch us, and go home clean.
Take-home resolution: Prepare an examination of conscience this week and go to confession.
Dear brothers and sisters, in our tradition every Sunday of the Great Fast shows us Christ the physician. Today a leper comes to him. In those days a leper lived outside the village, had to cry “Unclean!” when anyone came near, and could touch no one. This man kneels and says: “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.”
Then Jesus does something no one else would do. He stretches out his hand and touches him. “I do choose. Be made clean.” By the Law, touching a leper made a person unclean. But with Jesus the opposite happens: his touch makes the leper clean. That is what Lent offers each of us: the touch of Christ on the part of our life we hide from everyone.
Our first reading tells of Naaman, a proud Syrian general with leprosy. The prophet told him simply to wash seven times in the Jordan. He was offended: is that all? But when he humbled himself and obeyed, his flesh became like a child's. Healing needs humility. For us, the Jordan is the sacrament of Confession. It seems too simple. But it heals.
After healing the leper, Jesus withdrew to deserted places to pray. Let us make room for prayer in this Fast, make a good Confession, and reach out to the “lepers” of our time: the sick, the lonely, those everyone avoids. And let us hear Jesus say to us: “I do choose. Be made clean.” Amen.
Children, long ago people with a skin disease called leprosy had to live alone. Nobody would touch them or play with them.
One day a man with leprosy came to Jesus and said: “If you want, you can heal me.” Jesus touched him and said: “I want to. Be healed!” And he was healed!
Is there someone at school whom nobody plays with? Be kind to them, like Jesus. Let's say: “Jesus, make me kind!”
Lord Jesus, physician of souls and bodies, you touched the leper and made him clean. Stretch out your hand over us in this Fast: cleanse what is hidden, heal what is wounded, and give us the humility of Naaman and the faith of the leper. Amen.
Garbo means the leper, and on this Sunday the Great Fast looks at Christ the physician. The evening Gospel (Matthew 8:1–4) and the Gospel of the Qurbono (Luke 5:12–16) tell the same healing. The Old Testament lessons surround it. Noah goes into the ark and “the Lord shut him in” (Genesis 7:16). Jeremiah sees God's people as lost sheep coming back in tears (50:4–7). Isaiah prays, “Be our arm every morning” (33:2). Saul, newly baptized in Damascus, proclaims Jesus (Acts 9:20–25).
We study three readings that belong together. Naaman, the great general of Aram, must lay down his pride and go down into a small river. Paul says that all boasting is excluded, and that we stand before God by faith. The leper of the Gospel has nothing left to boast of, and says only, “Lord, if you choose”. Humility is the door, and the hand of Christ is on the other side of it.
Setting.
The story belongs to the cycle of the prophet Elisha, in the time when the kingdoms of Israel and Aram, with its capital at Damascus, were often at war. Naaman is an enemy commander and a foreigner. Those who help him along the way are nearly all people with no rank: a captive girl, a messenger, a few servants. The powerful, the two kings and at first Naaman himself, only get in the way.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” (5:3)
A girl carried off from her home by this man's raiders wishes him well. All the healing begins with the mercy of the one who had the most reason to hate him.
“I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!” (5:11)
“For me.” Naaman has come with an idea of how God should treat a man like him. His disappointment is not with the river. It is with being treated like everyone else.
“Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it?” (5:13)
Servants who call their master “Father” teach him. It is often easier to do a hard thing than a plain one, since a hard thing lets us keep our pride.
“So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.” (5:14)
“He went down”: in body and in spirit. What heals is not the water by itself but the word of God obeyed. The verses just after say that Naaman returns and confesses the God of Israel (5:15).
How the Church reads it.
Jesus himself recalls this story at Nazareth: “none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian” (Luke 4:27). God's mercy goes beyond every border, and this was not a new idea but the old Scripture of Israel. The Fathers read Naaman as a figure of baptism. St Ambrose, explaining the sacraments to the newly baptized, points to Naaman's doubt about the river and teaches that it is not the water but the grace of Christ that heals (in substance, On the Mysteries). The Catechism sees the Jordan as part of the Old Testament's preparation for baptism, and Jesus himself goes down into it (CCC 1222–1224).
Setting.
Paul writes about the year 57 or 58 to a Church he did not found, made up of Christians of Jewish and of Gentile background. In chapters 1–3 he has shown that all, Jews and Gentiles alike, need God's mercy, and in 3:21–26 he has announced God's saving righteousness through faith in Christ. Today's passage draws the conclusions. Paul speaks here as a Jew who loves his people (9:1–5), and he calls Abraham “our ancestor”.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.” (3:28)
Nothing we do earns the first gift. Martin Luther's German Bible added “alone” here, as some earlier writers had done in explaining Paul; the word is not in the Greek. Catholics and Lutherans have in our own time said together what they believe about this (see the question below).
“Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also?” (3:29)
Paul argues from Israel's own creed: “The Lord is our God, the Lord alone” (Deuteronomy 6:4). If God is one, he is one God for all.
“Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.” (3:31)
Paul does not despise the Law. Christ is its goal, and the Spirit gives power to fulfil what it asks (8:4).
“For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”” (4:3)
The verse comes from Genesis 15:6, before Abraham was circumcised (Genesis 17). So he is a father for all who believe (4:11).
How the Church reads it.
The Council of Trent itself teaches that nothing that comes before justification, neither faith nor works, merits the grace of justification (Session 6, chapter 8). The Catechism says that justification has been merited for us by the Passion of Christ (CCC 1992) and that it comes from the grace of God (CCC 1996); with regard to God, we have no strict right to any merit (CCC 2007). It quotes St Thérèse: “In the evening of this life, I shall appear before you with empty hands” (CCC 2011). In this the leper and Naaman are our teachers.
Setting.
This follows the call of Peter (5:1–11), and the same healing appears in Mark 1:40–45 and Matthew 8:1–4. Under Leviticus the person with such a disease must cry out “Unclean, unclean” and “shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp” (13:45–46). This law was meant to guard the community, and it cost the sick person almost everything: home, worship and the touch of other human beings.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” (5:12)
He says “clean”, not “well”. He asks for his whole life back: family, worship, a place among people.
“Then Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, “I do choose. Be made clean.” Immediately the leprosy left him.” (5:13)
This man may not have felt a human touch in years. Jesus gives him that before the healing has even happened. Mark adds “Moved with pity” (1:41), and the Lord's will to heal has not changed.
“for a testimony to them.” (5:14)
Jesus sends him to the priest, as Leviticus 14 commands. He does not set aside the Law; he honours it, and the man's healing becomes a witness. The priest's task was to confirm the cure, and so the man could go home.
“But he would withdraw to deserted places and pray.” (5:16)
The Greek describes a habit. The more the crowds came, the more he withdrew. The physician of bodies lives from the Father's presence, and a parish that serves the sick needs the same.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism calls Christ's compassion toward the sick and his many healings a resplendent sign that God has visited his people (CCC 1503). It adds that he often makes use of signs, and that the sick try to touch him (CCC 1504). In the sacraments, it says, Christ continues to touch us in order to heal us (CCC 1504). He is the “physician of our souls and bodies” (CCC 1421). St John Chrysostom, preaching on the same healing, says that Jesus touched the leper to show that he was above the Law: his hand did not become unclean, but the body of the leper became clean (in substance, Homilies on Matthew 25). The Fathers often saw leprosy as an image of sin, which spreads, isolates and disfigures.
Was biblical leprosy the same as Hansen's disease?
Not necessarily. The Hebrew ṣāra‘at and the Greek lepra cover a range of skin conditions. What matters in these stories is the exclusion from the community that came with it. In our time, those with Hansen's disease can be treated and cured, and they still need our welcome.
Does Paul contradict St James, who says that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone (James 2:24)?
No. Paul speaks of how we first come into right relation with God, and that is by grace through faith, before any work of ours. James speaks of living faith, which must show itself in action. The Council of Trent and the Catechism hold both. In 1999 the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation signed a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, saying together: by grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts and equips us for good works (15). Paul himself says that what counts is “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6).
Why does Jesus tell him to tell no one?
Probably because Jesus did not want to be taken as a mere wonder-worker, drawing crowds for the wrong reason. Verse 15 shows that this is just what began to happen. The command also sends the man first to the priest, so that he can return to the community by the proper way.
Garbo is the Syriac word for a leper. The Sundays of the Great Fast in our tradition follow Christ the physician: the leper, the paralytic, the Canaanite woman's daughter, the bent woman, the man born blind. Naaman has a special place among us. He was a man of Aram, and Syriac, the language of our liturgy, grew from the Aramaic of that same world, a language Jesus himself spoke. In this Fast, Confession is our Jordan: a plain act, and for that very reason hard for the proud. At the Holy Qurbono the hand of Christ comes closer still. He does not only touch us; in Holy Communion he comes to dwell in us.