A Reflection for the Monday of the Third Week of Lent

We encounter Leprosy frequently in the Bible. Why is this so, and why is this condition considered such a curse? Its sufferers were excluded from society; the disease was considered punishment for their sins. The Hindus felt that it was penance for misdeeds in an earlier life.

Scholars now tell us that the Hebrew term tsara`ath, usually translated as leprosy, is, in fact, a description of a broad number of skin conditions including bacterial infections, psoriasis and fungal rashes.

Nonetheless, the condition that we now call Hansen’s Disease or Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease, caused by two agents, mycobacterium leprae and mycobacterium lepromatosis, similar to the microbe that causes tuberculosis. While it is not highly infectious, it is passed from person to person with prolonged contact.

The mycobacteria cause skin lesions and destroy nerve cells. The patient loses the sense of temperature, pain and touch, which can cause loss of body tissues and disfigurement. Without sensation, the body is not protected from the daily wear and tear of contact with the environment.

The disease can cause deformities such as loss of fingers and toes, eyebrows and eyelashes, drooped eyelids, collapsed noses, perforated nasal septa, facial paralysis, claw hands and foot drop. In addition, chronically infected ulcers, in tissues devoid of sensation, can be malodorous and unsightly.

Lepers were truly “strangers” in biblical times. They were stigmatized and segregated in colonies. We have “strangers” in our own time – not only migrants and refugees, but also those “undesirables,” who we are often tempted to avoid.

Pope Francis tells us to “Welcome the Stranger.” As he says, “Do not fall into the trap of indifference and selfishness. It is precisely in the measure in which we open to others that life becomes fecund, societies re-acquire peace and individuals recover their full dignity.”

Francis also says: “It’s not easy to put ourselves in another person’s shoes, especially those very different from us, and this can cause us to have doubts and fears. ..the sin is to allow these fears to determine our responses, to limit our choices, to compromise respect and dignity, to feed hostility and rejection. The sin is to refuse to encounter the other, to encounter the different, to encounter the neighbor, when this is in fact a privileged opportunity to encounter the Lord.”

The STM community has generously and energetically welcomed families from Syria and Afghanistan. Are we able to accept those other “strangers” – those on the fringe of society, the homeless, the disenfranchised, the mentally ill, those who became lost along the way. Are we ready to heed Fr. Bob’s words “All are welcome”?

If we can open our hearts and minds to these individuals, we hear the word of today’s Psalmist: “I hope in the Lord, I trust in his word; with him there is kindness and plenteous redemption.”