The leprosy of Sin prevents from adoring God in Spirit and in Truth.

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today we hear of the healing of the man with leprosy. Leprosy was one of the most disfiguring, disgusting and debilitating diseases in the history of the world. It literally involved a rotting away of the flesh and the extremities, all as the affected person watches in agony until eventually death comes. As bad as all of this was, there were however, even worse aspects of leprosy. Leprosy was not only a death sentence, but a prison sentence, in that it separated the one affected not only from the larger society but from his loved ones, from his friends and families as well. Imagine going through a debilitating and terminal disease…now image doing it alone.

Because of leprosy’s effect of separating its victims not only from a support system but from those he cared about the most-family, over the last few years this Gospel has been used to point out the marginalized and outcast of our society. Many priests, speaking from a social gospel aspect, pointed out that Jesus, like he did with this leper, always welcomed the outcast and dregs of society; and so in imitation of Jesus we should do so as well. There is of course nothing wrong with this understanding; it’s a message of tolerance; the Catholic Church in fact came up with the idea of tolerance; it’s expressed in the following way, “Hate the sin, love the sinner, but love him by calling him to repentance.

Unfortunately, many of those who call for tolerance have redefine tolerance; they have redefined it to mean tolerance of sin. In other words, we are just supposed to by tolerant to those who say, that we must not only put up with their sinful lifestyle and look the other way, but that we must accept it and even endorse it. And if we refuse, then we will become the outcast of society, the criminals of society. (This by the way is one of the dangers of socialism as we discussed last week; begin by kicking God out of society, you can then redefine what is good and evil, what is virtue and what is vice. Ultimately, is all about the power of the few over the many, all disguised under “care for the poor”).

God never tolerates sin and we can never tolerate sin either. Sin is evil; it is devastating to the happiness of man. In fact, leprosy, that horribly disfiguring and separating disease, has been used by the fathers of the Church to symbolize the devastating effects of sin. Sin does to the soul, what leprosy does to the body. Venial sin begins to damage the soul, making it stink in a spiritual sense; and if it isn’t checked, sin can lead to the even death of the soul, through serious sin or mortal sin. Serious sin,--mortal sin, kills the soul.

Sin kills the soul because it separates the soul from God and from His Church which is the Sacrament of salvation. How does Sin do this, How does it separated us from God and His Church? Many would answer this question by saying that when we sin, we break the law of God and so he punishes us. But this answer really isn’t satisfactory. Sin separates us from God and His Church by actually making the soul incapable of worshiping God properly; and so, incapable of receiving fully not only God’s grace, but God himself. Sin is so against God’s nature that nothing unclean can enter into union with Him; God is charity and sin is the very opposite of charity. Perhaps to better understand this, we need again to look at our comparison of leprosy to sin.

Leprosy in the time of Jesus frightened people, just as terrible and contagious diseases frighten us today. But even more than this, and this is the worst aspect of leprosy, leprosy rendered somebody unclean, that is ritually unclean. What does ritually unclean mean? It means they were prevented from engaging in the act of worship in the temple. It’s not coincidental by the way, that the person who examined the person for leprosy to determined if they were unclean was a priest. Why the priest? Well he was the one who was given the charge to monitor the worship of the people to make sure their worship corresponded to the dictates of God. In other words, the priest had to make sure that the people were worshiping God the way God by His very nature has to be worship. God is to be worshiped in spirit and in truth. And so, it was the priest, according to the law given by God in the book of Leviticus, who was to determine who could and couldn’t participate in temple worship.

And so, I hope you see the connection. Sin, like leprosy in the Old Testament times and the time of Jesus not only separate its victim from the community and his family, it separated him from the family of God and from that families’ worship in the temple of the true and living God. Remember, Jesus came to find those who would worship God in spirit and in truth. The point is, is that we are saved by correct worship and adoration of God. It’s not that God needs our worship, but it we who need to worship Him..Worship is our going to Him who first came to us, to love Him who first loved us. But we must worship according to God’s notion, carrying out the first commandment which is ultimately a commandment to adore. Sin prevents us from proper worship of God. Sin either keeps us from worshiping God altogether, or even if we come into the Church if we do so with un-repented sin on our soul we cannot possibly enter into the type of worship that God by His very nature demands. In the end, we end up worshiping according to our own whims.

One of the primary reasons why Jesus came to earth was to gather the children of Israel, who had been scattered by sin, by disobedience, in other words, who had been scattered through their failure to adore God. Jesus came to teach the people not only how to adore God, but to purify them of their sinfulness so they would be able to do so properly. Jesus came to heal Israel, not only of their sin but of their improper and disordered worship. Yes some failed to worship altogether, but many more made their worship of God more about themselves--they worshiped God according to their own dictates, their own rules, their own liturgy--the result was more sin and the eventual division and disintegration of the family and society.

This correction of the worship of Israel is shown in Jesus cleansing the temple, in order to make it again properly the place to worship God. This cleansing of the temple also symbolizes that Jesus desired as well to cleanse the temples of men’s heart in order that through their proper worship of God they would become a living dwelling place of God, one not made by human hands.

The leper today is all of those who have wondered away from right worship of God, those who are no longer willing or able to worship of God. Hundreds of thousands, million of Catholics have wondered away from the worship of God and so no longer worship Him at Sunday Mass. The leper is also those who although may be present at Mass, do so with sin on their soul which leads them to worship God incorrectly or improperly.

The more we properly worship God at the Mass, by adoring Son in the Holy Eucharist and the Father through the Son, by the Holy Spirit, the more our entire life becomes ordered to God’s will and the more we become one with God, on earth as it is in heaven. Then the more our lives become full of meaning and joy; the more we adore God through our adoration of Him the more we become the person we want to be, the person we are meant to be, the person we were created to be. And when we worship God correctly, then we become like the God we worship, He who is the God who is love. We then find ourselves, who we are; worship is nothing that God needs, it is at the core of everything we need.

There’s on other aspect of our healing and of our being able to return to proper worship of God at Holy Mass. And that is once we worship and adore God as individuals we as a parish family become properly ordered and united in love. We become a saving force for the communities in which we live and work. And the more we are united in our worship and adoration, the more we can lead the nations to same worship. Israel healed of its sin and taught to worship God aright, by their adoration of God, was to lead all the nations to worship God; all nations would become united as a human family united in God’s love. We are the fulfillment of Israel called to worship God on His Holy Mountain which is the Holy Mass in order to obtain the grace of conversion for the whole world. Jesus instituted the Eucharist to bring all nations into the family of God by their proper worship of God through the Holy Mass.

Why is our world, our country, seemingly falling apart, it’s because there is not enough of those… not enough Catholics who are willing to worship God in spirit and in truth; millions have substituted the worship of God for false worship; either the worship of idols or they have made up their own way of worshipping God so they can be entertained and made to feel good (sadly even within the Church through liturgical abuse). St. Augustine said, that we can uncover the nation of a society very easily by asking one simple question, What do the people in this society worship? The culture of Augustine time was Rome, a society which survived much longer than our American society. Augustine said, Rome had fallen precisely because it worshiped the wrong gods. Their gods were vain, petty and violent and the people became vain, petty and violent; we become like the god we worship and so we need to worship the true God and worship according to his rules not our own. Their society worshiped money, comfort, entertainment at the same time they killed their young.

Our failure as creatures, especially us Catholic creatures, to worship the Creator properly in Spirit and in Truth is the root cause of all of man’s current struggles; it has been the cause of all man’s suffering and sorrow, and even wars from the beginning. It is the ultimate cause of our current economic and social ills. When the creature refuses to adore the Creator or refuses to adore Him in the proper way, the only result can be a separation of the creator from his Creator resulting in hell on earth and in the life to come unless the creator turns back to adoring his maker.

You can see, skipping Mass or not making it the most important part of our lives, is more than just not doing what were suppose to; it is not doing what we must as God’s children, is not doing what we must if we truly love our God. The Holy Mass is the source and summit of our Christian life; it is the Sacrament of our Salvation for it makes present the way, the only way back to the God from which we came.
All of the great saints of the Church knew that the answer to the ills in society lie in the people of God adoring Him through proper worship. The Holy Mass is this proper worship of God, is the perfect worship of God because it is the worship of the Son given to the Father. Here at Mass we can come before the Lord Jesus who comes again to us through the Holy Eucharist; Here, He gives us the truth, both in His Word and in His body, because he is the Truth, and here he gives us the Holy Spirit; he does this all in and through the Sacred Priesthood. The truth and the Holy Spirit, both are needed to adore our God not only at Sunday Mass, but to adore him in spirit and in truth in our daily lives, in all that we think, say or do.

But, for us to worship properly at Mass in order that the fruit of the Mass goes out into the world through us, then we must first meet Jesus in the sacrament of confession where he can heal us. In the Sacrament of God’s mercy we can make the words of the Leper our own, “lord if you will it you can make me clean. And he says to us through his priest, “I do will it, be made clean.” He then makes us whole and enables us to with full and actual participation to enter into the worship of God in the Holy Mass, there adoring Him in Spirit and in Truth; obtaining the gift of our salvation and the salvation of the whole world.