It was
not the dispositions of the Samaritan leper alone which led to his
expressing his reverence for Our Lord and his gratitude for his loss of
leprosy. It lay rather in the deep encounter between Jesus and the
leper.
A real contact, of soul to soul and person to person, was
always possible with Jesus because he acted, moved and spoke with great
freedom. It is the absence of those qualities in us which can make our
personal relationships difficult. We become clogged down, with hardly a
place from where we can begin to try to start again. But there were
dimensions in the character of the Samaritan leper which the others did
not have.
Our Lord did not give these lepers immediately their
healing and their time to express their relief. The healing and the
expression came as they went along. They all had the faith to take
Jesus's instruction seriously and went to the priests, which probably
meant going to Jerusalem itself. The Law of Moses extended into all
matters of religious purity and impurity.
Leprosy was and remains
contagious, and that contagion was looked upon as an expression of
unfitness to present oneself to take part in the collective worship. The
priests rather than the doctors were designated to declare a man pure
from leprosy. In itself restoration to a healthy state was regarded as
an expression of divine mercy.
So a formula of words was not
enough for the Samaritan former leper to express his gratitude. Firstly
he raised his voice in praise, and that seems to have lasted for a long
time -- probably the whole distance back to where he had left Jesus. His
soul was deeply stirred, and he could in no other way express his
relief. And he threw himself on the ground before Jesus as an expression
of worship, because he had detected a divine power at work in his
healing.
As he looked into his own soul he saw with the
profoundest relief that the weight of the leprosy had gone, and the
weight of separation from his fellow men had gone. He had become normal.
In no other way could it have taken place than this, with the divine
power which the Teacher could summon up so quickly and effectively. The
socially deprived are always grateful for the gifts they receive -- but
for their healing, rather than money.
For sensitivity calls out
sensitivity in the other for a service done, no matter how slight. It
could so easily not be there, not become present. Our Lord did not
demand it. In fact it occurs in a minority of cases of sickness brought
to his attention with the request for healing.
Where there is a
society brought into being by charity, and characterised by the practice
of charity between its members, the possibilities for a higher mode of
human living are so much greater. There is compassion for affliction of
every kind. Something of that is present even when such reciprocal
relations have not begun, even where help is regarded only as a right
one can claim, not an expression of goodness. Those who handle the sick
have to forget themselves consciously. One can tell in a few seconds
whether they are being motivated by duty alone or whether there is an
expression of human sympathy. The soul knows instinctively whether it is
being regarded as a 'case', a test-case of human virtue, or in an
expression of the recognition of the seeds of growth of a humanity
basically like one's own, of another oneself.
In that setting the
expression of thanksgiving finds no hindrances for a service done, and
not only in healing. If it is so, then there is a perception of the
characteristic of goodness in itself, which always seeks to extend
itself.
When the social structure is networked with procedures for
social aid, which can be called upon without hesitation, it shows
itself to have developed a high social sense. Then there will be no need
for "complaints procedures" and "committees of enquiry" of all sorts.
For charity has come to birth in that society, and in its social living.
Then the coping stone for it all will be the perception that God is
love, a belief in which we must have no fear and no doubt.
The
only sadness is when this sense does not rise to express itself when it
is so evidently appropriate, as with the other nine lepers -- who may
have been somewhat embarrassed by what they could have thought to be an
excessive expression of thankfulness from their Samaritan member.(Edward Booth O.P.torch.op.org:here)
No comments:
Post a Comment