THE TEXT BELOW IS THE TRANSCRIPTION OF THE VIDEO COMMENTARY BY FR. FERNANDO ARMELLINI

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A good Sunday to all.

In Jesus’ time, in Israel, all diseases were considered punishment for sins. The reason was that all believed in God’s justice, and since only a minority believed in another life, they said that God did justice in this world with the wicked, under the gaze of all through the diseases; and the worst of all was leprosy. Thus, the leper was considered the incarnation of sin.Leprosy that covered him made visible externally what that person was inside. It was said that God punished with leprosy the envious, arrogant, thieves, those responsible for murder, false judgments, and incest.

Leprosy in Hebrew is called ‘saraat’ and is derived from the verb ‘sara,’ which means to strike. For this reason, the leper did not arouse compassion because he had brought his disgrace upon himself by committing sins. It was an incurable disease. To cure a leper was like raising a dead person from the dead; leprosy was the ‘sister of death.’ The historian Josephus Flavius in “The Jewish Antiquities” says lepers were no different from corpses. And the Torah established how these people should behave. In the book of Leviticus, chapter 13 says that the lepers were to wear a torn garment, their head covered, covered up to the upper lip. And if anyone came near them, he was to start shouting: ‘Go away; I am a leper.’

They lived away from the inhabited area, separated from everybody, they were in the forests, they took refuge in the caves, and if some generous person came to bring them something to eat, left the food at the entrance of the forest and when this person went away, they came closer and took the food, but they couldn’t meet anybody. And what was worse, they didn’t just feel rejected by people, but also by God.

Why is the leper’s condition united to that of the sinner? Because both are evil. It is enough to think about what is involved in being a leper. First of all, we know that leprosy does not kill; it makes the person lose sensibility. And what is the consequence? The person can no longer distinguish what is good for you and what is bad, the cold from the heat, not realizing when you have a wound, falling into the fire and not realizing, or cutting a finger and not realizing it.

This person, therefore, is disfigured by this disease. He becomes ugly, unrecognizable; he becomes a human mask. The leper’s condition is a parable of the one who loses moral sensibility. He does not realize what is right and what is wrong, the consequences of the choices he makes. It happens to what the prophet Isaiah says in chapter 5: ‘Woe to those who call evil good and good evil. They turn light into darkness, and darkness into light; bitter into sweet, and sweet into bitter.’ He who loses moral sensibility begins to ruin himself. That person becomes disfigured, dehumanized, becomes a bad person, disgusting like the leper.

The sinner does not die but becomes more and more transformed, unrecognizable. The human aspect begins to disappear from his face. Let us think of a corrupt, violent, criminal, dissolute person… we say, ‘what a bad person,’ he is someone who has lost the human likeness.’ And, sometimes the moral degradation appears also externally; when we observe this person, sometimes we perceive leprosy that he has inside. And as we do with the lepers, we also try to avoid these people, we don’t want to have them as neighbors. We even have a saying: ‘avoid a person like a leper.’

That’s how lepers and sinners were regarded in Jesus’ time. But did Jesus have this attitude toward lepers and sinners?

Let’s hear how he behaved when he met the lepers:

“As he continued his journey to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled through Samaria and Galilee. As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him. hey stood at a distance from him and raised their voice, saying, ‘Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!’ And when he saw them, he said, ‘Go show yourselves to the priests.’ As they were going they were cleansed.”

A first clarification to understand how we will approach this text. When the evangelists narrate the healings done by Jesus, it is not only information that they want to give, but they also want to give a catechesis, they want to nourish spiritually the communities of that time and ours. For this reason, they present these episodes by resorting to biblical images alluding, sometimes in a veiled way and others in a straightforward way, to episodes of the Old Testament. For this reason, the healing narratives are always transformed into parables that we must see the message.

Today’s text is one of those parables; let’s go beyond the material fact, that is, the healing that Jesus actually did, and we will try to discover what the evangelist wants to communicate to us. The text begins by saying that Jesus “was entering a village” and from that village, ten lepers came to meet him. Taken as a chronicle, this detail is not plausible. The lepers could not be in the village; they had to be outside, separated, far from everyone. But as a parablethe detail is obvious.

Jesus enters this town, and only the lepers come out to meet him; it gives the impressionthat it is a town only inhabited by lepers. Who do they represent? Jesus encounters our humanity; humanity that must be purified by his word. Let us reflect on who are the peoplethat Jesus encounters in the gospels. They are usually people burdened by pain, sickness, sin,hunger, of our miseries. Jesus meets our humanity.

How many ruptures do we find also today… useless to enumerate them because we know them very well: diseases, wars, violence, injustices, marginalization. It is leprous humanity that needs to be healed by the word of the gospel. Our selfishness has made leprous even the created things; the seas and rivers are unclean, the air we breathe. Hence the need to ‘come out’ of this town.

In the gospels, the city represents the ancient world, marked by sin. The world from which we are invited to come out to find the gospel that heals. Let us remember Jesus’ gesturewho, when he finds the deaf and dumb man, does not heal him in the village but takes him outside because if he remains in the village he will continue to listen to what everybody says, the way of judging, thinking, and evaluating everything.

This does not correspond with the gospel, with the way of thinking of Christ. Jesus wants to open your ears to the new message. The gospel message does not correspond to what is seen and heard on social media. Then, after having cured the blind man of Bethsaida, Jesus advises him not to enter the town because the town represents the place where all follow the same criteria, where all think in the same way, the same moral criteria. And Jesus says to this blind man, ‘if you go back to town, you’re going to see reality and life as everyone else sees it. On the other hand, I have opened your eyes so that you may see things better, to give the right value to life.’

Moreover, let us note that not one but ten lepers come out of this town. In the bible, number 10 has a symbolic value; it indicates totality. It is the number of adults required for the assembly in the synagogue to take place. So, the number ten is a new warning to the symbolism of the whole of humanity, marked by the leprosy of sin.

Luke wants to tell us, ‘we are all leprous… none of us is pure; we all bear on our skin the sign of death, which only the word of the gospel can heal. The awareness that we are all lepers helps to overcome discrimination. We will see later in the narration that this group of lepers is composed of Galileans and Samaritans. When these feel pure, they despise each other, hate each other, and fight among themselves. But when they realize that they are all impure and leprous, they become friends and solidary.

What happens next? They have stayed some distance away. And they begin to cry out, “Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!” They should have shouted: ‘Go away; we are unclean’ as the book of Leviticus prescribes; instead, they turn to Jesus. calling him by name. According to Luke, they are the first people in the gospel to call Jesus by name. Also, the blind man of Jericho calls Jesus by name. And then, a third person: the bandit on the cross. These are the only three people who call Jesus by name. When do we call a person by name? When he is our friend. If we meet the president of the republic, we don’t call him by his name, we do not address him as ‘you’; instead, they call him by his name and say ‘you.’

In Luke’s gospel, he is called ‘you’ only by people who feel confident in Jesus. They are not the good, pious, and righteous; they are the lepers, the sick and sinners. They feel they can address Jesus by calling him by name and saying ‘you.’ They do not ask him for healing because they know very well that leprosy cannot be cured; they say to him, “have pity on us.”In other words, he feels the guts of love for our condition. They are people marginalized from society, alienated from family, from affections.

Let us try to imagine the pain that these people feel of not being able to receive a caress,of not being able to receive a hug. They even think that even God does not want to caress and embrace them. As soon as he sees them, Jesus says to them, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” Let us notice that Jesus does not approach them; he does not touch them. He heals them from a distance with his word. That word, at a distance, heals today the leprosy of our humanity.

And Jesus says to them: “Go…” ‘The encounter with me has already purified you; now present yourselves to the priests who will verify it; that’s what they do: verify that you are healed. And you will be able to return to society, and you will be able to enter the temple.’Let’s continue now to read the text as a parable: when our humanity becomes conscious of its misery and realizes that only the word of the gospel can heal it; it begins the path that leads them to healing.

If it trusts the word of Jesus, as these ten did, and humankind embarks on the path that he has indicated, the effects of the leprosy of sin will gradually disappear. While they are on the way, they are purified; that is, when they decide to leave the town, their leprosy begins to disappear. They leave the place where life is guided by the spirit of the evil one who makes them lepers. This spirit of the evil one is selfishness, thinking of oneself… this is what makes one leprous.

We come now to the last part of the text, the return of the one.

Let us hear what has happened:

“As they were going they were cleansed. And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan. Jesus said in reply, ‘Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?’ Then he said to him, ‘Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.’”

We have now come to the most challenging point of the reading. How does one explain Jesus’ sad reaction that only one of the ten has returned? And he observes, “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine?” Some attribute Jesus’ sadness to the lack of gratitude of the other nine. But such a reaction would be surprising in Jesus because he is a good person; it does not look good for him to be sad because they are not grateful. He has taught that love is free. The one who loves is satisfied when he sees the person who benefits happy. ‘Let not your right hand know not what your left hand does,’ ‘do good without expecting anything in return,’ Jesus said. If we would like to reconstruct the fact with a minimum of logic, what happened is the following: the other nine are the only ones who have obeyed Jesus’ command and went to present themselves to the priests. When they realized that they were ‘pure’ they went to their families, and afterward, they would have returned to Jesus with their wives and children to thank him.

So, what is it that has saddened Jesus? Not the fact that they did not return immediatelyto thank him; Jesus does not speak of thanks. This we have invented. He laments the fact that they did not find none to return to render glory to God. He is sad that they did not realize, immediately, all of them, that through his purifying word to humankind, the glory of God had been revealed.

What is meant by ‘giving glory to God’? Perhaps we think of God manifesting his glory when he displays his strength, divides the Red Sea into two parts and defeats the enemies. God reveals his glory when he succeeds in manifesting the beauty of his face which is love, which is tenderness for humanity. Jesus asks himself how is it that only a Samaritan Is aware of this glory. How did the other nine miss this revelation?

He is saddened that the only one sensitive to the manifestation of God’s glory was a foreigner, ‘ἀλλογενὴς’ – ‘allogenes’ in Greek, meaning ‘of another race.’ Jews should have understood this because they had been educated by the prophets; instead, the heretic, the foreigner, came first to receive the love of God for leprous humanity.

Perhaps we will be astonished at the spiritual insensitivity of the other nine; not of the normal gratitude of people, but a spiritual sensitivity that knows how to receive the glory, the love of God. But let us be attentive; let us make a check to see if our spiritual sensitivity is superior to that of these nine. Let’s ask ourselves in a moment of reflection, of silence, of prayer if we realize how important the gospel has been in our life that it has purified us, that it has made our life beautiful.

For example, if you think about your life, can you say with joy that your life until today has been beautiful? I am not trying to say ‘beautiful’ because you have enjoyed many things, but ‘beautiful’ in the true sense, because you have lived it well, happy for what you have done, for what you have accomplished, for the attention given to someone who needed you.Perhaps someone has said to you: ‘How is it that you always have time and availability for everybody?’ If this is the judgment that you can give of your life, have you realized that it had been the light of the gospel that has guided you since you were a child, to become a beautiful person? And has it ever crossed your mind to give glory to God for the fortune to have found Christ and his gospel that made you beautiful? Maybe someone has told you: ‘What a beautiful family you have, what a beautiful relationship you have! Despite all the difficulties you have had to face, you have always loved each other well.’ Have we given glory to God because it was the gospel that made us understand the value of marital fidelity, of unconditional love, of forgiveness, of reconciliation? Have we received the glory of God that has happened through the word of Christ and his gospel?

We lament so much about our society, about so much leprosy that we see around us: corruption, hedonism, violence, loss of values. The evil is undeniable, but there is also an ocean of good and love. If we have realized how much the gospel has changed the world and how today the word of Christ continues to create a new world, reclaiming the value of life,from conception to the natural end, the value of the family, justice, the sharing of goods, and the attention to the poor… Have we given glory to God for all this? God has accomplished this purification through the word of Christ.

We Christians must be the first to realize that it is the proclamation of the gospel that has changed the world and is changing the world, which makes our society beautiful. But do we believe it? If we don’t sing our praise to God for these gifts, we have not received his glory, his love. Jesus says to this Samaritan, “Stand up and go, your faith has saved you.” Faith is the adherence that he has given to that word which can purify you.

We frequently find this exclamation of Jesus in the gospels: ‘Your faith has saved you.’He is saying to us today, ‘if you will take my word for it and follow the way that I show you,along this path, you will see that which does you wrong and which is destroyed, purified by the gospel.’

I wish you all a good Sunday and a good week.