January 09, 2015
Friday after Epiphany
1st Reading: 1 Jn 5:5–13
Gospel: Lk 5:12–16
One day in another town, a man came to Jesus covered with leprosy. On seeing him he bowed down to the ground, and said, “Lord, if you want to, you can make me clean.”
Stretching out his hand, Jesus touched the man and said, “Yes, I want it. Be clean.” In an instant the leprosy left him. Then Jesus instructed him, “Tell this to no one. But go and show yourself to the priest. Make an offering for your healing, as Moses prescribed; that should be a proof to the people.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
The way the leper asked Jesus in today’s Gospel reading for healing has a lot to teach us about prayer. He told Jesus, “Lord, if you want to, you can make me clean.” These are not words of an impatient man. Yet he had all the reasons to be intolerant. Physically, leprosy was slowly eating him up; emotionally, he was drawn down by the stigma attached by society to lepers like him; socially lepers like him were outcasts of the community. These notwithstanding, he showed the sobriety of a patient man when he presented his case to the Lord.
What made him sober was the conviction that God was there for him. When he prayed “Lord if you want to you can make me clean”, he was not making a conditional statement; he was claiming the cure as a matter of fact. It was like saying, “God will make me clean because it is his will that I live my life to the full.” If he wasn’t so sure of the goodness of God he could have rattled off a litany of good deeds accomplished in the past to challenge God’s capacity to reciprocate. Instead, he humbly yet confidently prayed, “Lord if you want to, you can make me clean.” Surely God wanted him to be clean so that he could live his life to the full.
The important lesson we can draw from the story of the leper is confidence in prayer. When we pray we must be confident that God will answer us positively. Will this not lead to shameless persistence? Not if this confidence will result in correspondence. Correspondence happens when we align our lifestyle to the answer we expect of our prayers, such that those asking for patience will behave like a patient man, those who pray for financial windfall will start helping others generously, those praying for a happy family will behave like he is the source of life in that family. If one behaves in accordance with what he is praying for, God will be more than eager to grant his petitions, just like he did to the leper in today’s Gospel reading. – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website: www.frdan.org.
May comment ka ba sa column ni Father Dan? May tanong ka ba sa kanya? I-type ang BANDERA REACT <message /name/age/address> at i-send sa 4467.