Collect for 6th Sunday of Year B

 

COLLECT SERIES.

The Mass: Collect Series Icon.

COLLECT 

The Collect for the sixth Sunday of Year B reads as follows:

 

O God, who teach us that You abide in hearts that are just and true,

Grant that we may be so fashioned by Your grace

as to become a dwelling pleasing to You.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,

who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.

 

 

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

 

In making this prayer tangible, the following reflection questions emerged:

 

1. Acknowledge and thank God for abiding in my heart when I am just and ture.
2. What are the occasions that lead me not to be just and true?
3. What graces do I need from God in my life?
4. How will I become a dwelling place pleasing to God this coming week?
5. What plan of action have I made/are going to make before Lent begins to grow spiritually?

 

 

GOSPEL REFLECTION

 

Today’s Gospel is from Mk 1:40-45.  In this Gospel we see Jesus showing pity on the leper and healing Him.  Let us be clear about this healing.  Jesus really gave back this leper his life.  With leprosy, a leper had to live outside of the community and was considered unclean, contagious and no one wanted to have anything to do with him.  By healing him, Jesus raised him back to his true identity and to be part of the community again.

 

The leper showed that he had faith by asking ‘If you want to, you can heal me’. He was desperate and desired to be healed. Yet, he also had faith in Jesus to heal Him.  Do we have that kind of faith in Jesus for the healings that we need in our lives?

 

However, he did not do what Jesus asked of him ‘to show himself to the priest and to do what the law required for his healing’.  Instead, he broadcasted his healing everywhere so that in the end, Jesus Himself became a leper because He had to live outside of the towns in the desert places.

 

In psychological terms, the leper turned out to be a taker-someone who is out for themselves and takes but not gives.  He did not do what Jesus asked.  He should have known that if he broadcast his healing, that Jesus would become a leper too. He did not think of what his actions would cause on Jesus.  His action of broadcasting his healing, even though he was probably grateful, was in fact selfish. It was about him not about doing what Jesus asked and doing what the law required for his healing.

 

In this Gospel we need to ask ourselves what is our leprosy?  When do we place other people outside the camp of life so that they feel less than human or even contagious?

Of course, right now there is the Covid 19 which no one wants to contract. 

 

However, we can turn other people into lepers with other conditions.  For example:  I suffer from a condition called psoriasis.  It is a skin condition which is caused by the immune system running too quickly.  Normally the skin sheds dead cells every 28 days but with psoriasis, it sheds every 7 days.  Depending on the type of psoriasis, the skin has white scales on it.  It is very itchy and uncomfortable and sadly, no cure for it as yet. Some treatments work for a short time and then it returns. It is a vicious cycle.  So I can easily cry out 'If you want to, you can heal me'..  I do often.

 

Unfortunately, though from my own experience even in hospital, I was made to feel as if I was contagious.  The nurses talked about it in ignorance and were in fact quite fearful.  I felt less than... a leper in my own way.  I was not the same as everyone else.

 

The other aspect of this Gospel is as follows:

The compassion from Jesus for suffering humanity was, however, co-terminus with his power, it was also divine. It was out of compassion for the sad lot of the human race on earth that he descended to man's level, becoming man, equal to us in all things except sin, in order to suffer with us and for us. By his human sufferings he made an atonement, a satisfaction for all the sins of the world —a satisfaction which all mankind could never make—to his heavenly Father, and so obtained for us God's pardon. At the same time, 'by joining our human nature to his divine nature, he brought us into the divine orbit and made us adopted sons of God and heirs of the eternal life of the Blessed Trinity. Because this seems almost too good to be true, there are men who deny it or refuse to accept it. Such men make the mistake of measuring the infinite compassion of God with the limited yardstick of their own finite and puny compassion.

 

We need to thank God for his infinite compassion!  We need to thank God for Christ his Son, who came and dwelt amongst us! He put heaven and a share in the life of God within our reach; he has shown us how to attain them, giving in his Church and the sacraments, all the necessary aids. But we still need all of Christ's compassion if we are to get there. Because of our inclination to sin and because of the many times we unfortunately give in to that inclination, nothing but the mercy of God can save us from our own folly. However, that mercy is available, if only we ask for it.