My dear parishioners, few diseases were more feared or reviled than leprosy in ancient times. Before man and God, it was presumed, a leper was the lowest of the low. His disease was proof he was less than nothing before God’s eternal, absolute and omnipotent perfection.
 
How remarkable and touching that a distraught leper would kneel before Jesus—fully God and fully man—to give him permission to heal him. "If you will, you can make me clean,” he said. [Mk 1:40-45] Jesus was moved with pity. He embraced the sick man as he would his own mother. He touched him, saying, I do will it. He healed him.
 
To be moved with pity is to permit the compassion of your heart to carry you into the experience of someone who suffers. To be moved means to reach out and embrace. It means speaking and touching. Compassion is medicine for the spirit. It sets the scene for healing and the renewal of relationships. It makes possible the regeneration of human hope. Compassion liberates the soul from the clench of the present moment and quiets its trembling.
 
The compassion of Jesus Christ is a stirring reminder that Christianity is more than a glimpse of old light or the nimbus of an ambiguous future. Christ is immediate and radiant. This immediacy has a name—the Holy Spirit—who speaks what he hears. [cf. Jn 16:13] Become aware of your own poverty, now. Embrace the one who suffers, now. Open yourself to healing, now.
 
Perhaps you will speak freely about all this, spreading the news everywhere. The Mother of God counsels us that truth is vindicated by silence. Yet, we are not to worry. If a ruckus ensues in your heart or in your household, go quickly into the desert to pray with Jesus. There in solitude you will be little. Make yourself less than nothing before God. Give Jesus permission to touch you and heal you. And then give praise to God Most High and celebrate!
 
We have so much for which to be thankful! And joyful! The Catholic philosopher Joseph Pieper had much to say about ritual, explaining why the phenomena of celebration and liturgy occupy a place wholly above the ordinary activities of our human lives:
 
FIRST, THERE can be no more radical assent to the world than the praise of God, the lauding of the Creator of this same world. . . . Secondly—the ritual festival is the most festive form that festivity can possible take. . . . Thirdly—there can be no deadlier, more ruthless destruction of festivity than refusal of ritual praise.
 
A preceding reality makes evident this necessary "radical assent". The complexity of the natural world and all its wonders points to the corresponding and surpassing beauty and supernatural complexity of heaven:  "For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator."  [WisSol 13:5]
 
Heaven's splendor is mirrored by the beauty and grandeur of human ritual celebration, most perfectly expressed as the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The psalmist prays, "Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance."  [Psa 90:8] Thus the unfathomable mysteries of heaven reveal our human frailty and need while bringing to nothing the barrenness of the devil's grotesque society. Sincerely in the hearts of Jesus and Mary. Your pastor, Reverend Richard Barker.