We must let Jesus free us from sickness of body and soul

Jesus, in His public life, healed many sick people, thus revealing that what God wants for man is life, life in abundance.

The Gospel of Mark shows us Jesus in contact with a form of sickness considered at that time to be the most serious, leprosy, which made the sufferer “unclean” and excluded him from social life. While Jesus was preaching in Galilee a leper came up to Him asking to be healed. Jesus did not seek to avoid contact with the man. Quite the contrary, moved by intimate concern for his condition, He stretched out His hand—breaking the legal proscription—and said: “I do choose. Be made clean.”

Christ’s gesture and words encapsulate the entire history of salvation, they incarnate God’s will to heal us, to purify us from the evil that disfigures us and blights our relationships.

That contact between Jesus’ hand and the leper broke down all barriers between God and human impurity; between the sacred and its opposite, certainly not in order to deny evil and its negative power but to demonstrate that the love of God is stronger than all evil, even the most contagious and terrible.

Jesus took our infirmities upon Himself. He became a ‘leper’ that we might be purified. The victory of Christ is our profound healing and our resurrection to a new life.

Through His Mother, it is always Jesus Who comes to us, to free us from all sickness of body and soul. Let us allow ourselves to be touched and purified by Him, and let us show mercy to our fellows.