Confession and Healing

Since I will be away for a week, I have written a blog entry based upon next weeks Scriptures.  The readings of next week offer to us the “great exchange:” Christ’s life for ours as symbolized by the man with leprosy.  In the first reading of the book of Leviticus, the Lord is laying down rules for people who contract this contagious skin disease.  Ultimately, since there was no known cure except through some miracle, one who contracted this disease was destined to live “outside” the camp (community) while constantly declaring him/her unclean as a warning to all who might approach.  In a sense it seems cruel treatment for such a person.  However, there is a sense of charity in that the person doesn’t wish another to contract their disease.  But it is this sense of being “outside” the community that is important for our discussion.

 

What we see in the Gospel of Mark is a leper who realizing his fate risked breaking the rules of the community in the hope of being cured by Jesus.  “A leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said, ‘If you wish, you can make me clean.’  Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, ‘I do will it.  Be made clean.’”  Jesus was aware that the man was contagious and that he risked contracting the disease himself but still dared to reach out and touch this man.  Jesus realized the faith involved in the moment and acknowledged it with a healing.  The result is interesting:  the man’s health is restored as is his place “within” the community.  Jesus on the other hand now has to reside “outside of the community” not because he contracted the disease but because everyone would press him for his healing and miracles giving him no peace.  Jesus warned the man not to publicize the event so that he wouldn’t have to resort to “staying outside” of the community.  However, the man in his excitement couldn’t contain himself.  And so Jesus was destined to remain outside the community in deserted places where people would come to him for healing.  This continued until such time at the end of Mark’s Gospel when they no longer would come to him there but only crucify him “outside” of the city or communities boundaries.

 

Jesus entered our human community but saved us by being forced out of it.  The cross of Christ is not merely two beams of wood used to crucify our savior, but is symbolic of the boundaries of human existence.  The leper realized this and dared to come to the boundary between Christ and himself; between heaven and earth.  His alternative was a lifetime of isolation which was unbearable.  His miracle was a future of spiritual cleanliness and wholeness within the community.  It was the risk he was willing to take, even if it meant that Jesus would take on the real and symbolic separation to accomplish it.

 

This is what takes place in the sacrament of reconciliation.  Christ, through the ministry of the priest is willing to take upon himself all the sins of the world as confessed by the lips of those who dare to come to the cross (crossroads) between heaven and earth in order to discover spiritual healing, wholeness, and an opportunity to live within the Catholic Christian community in a more vibrant way.  And yet, like many of the other lepers, who would not or could not bring themselves to such a moment, we find ourselves choosing to remain apart from the community, spiritually speaking.  True, many of us will still go to church on Sundays and receive the Eucharist, mindful that we have given up on or refuse to accept the beautiful legacy of healing offered to us by Christ himself in this great sacrament.  But Saint Paul exhorts the faithful saying, “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.’  In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.  For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes. 

Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord.  A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup.  For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.  That is why many among you are ill and infirmed and a considerable number are dying.  If we discerned ourselves, we would not be under judgment; but since we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.” 

As far as symbolism is concerned, a modern day confessional is much like being “outside” of the community:  very few persons want to venture into that area.  Ironically, it’s as if the community views the priest-servant of Christ as the leper and no one wants to catch what he has.  However, we all need what Christ offers through his ministry!  The truth is that our personal and communal sins are the modern day leprosy and Christ through his priests are the only ones who can offer the healing prescribed.  So the question is, “who is really outside or within the community?”

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