Daily Gospel Reflection
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January 11, 2024
A leper came to him and kneeling down begged him and said,
“If you wish, you can make me clean.”
Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand,
touched the leper, and said to him,
“I do will it. Be made clean.”
The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean.
Then, warning him sternly, he dismissed him at once.
Then he said to him, “See that you tell no one anything,
but go, show yourself to the priest
and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed;
that will be proof for them.”
The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter.
He spread the report abroad
so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly.
He remained outside in deserted places,
and people kept coming to him from everywhere.
I am struck by Christ’s boundless empathy. Jesus wasn’t trying to show off in today’s gospel; he heals the leper because he was “moved with pity” for him.
On a recent weekend trip to New Orleans, while stopped in our car at an intersection, my five-year-old son saw a homeless man with a cardboard sign. He asked what the man was doing. I took a moment and then answered that some people are not as lucky as we are and do not have enough food to eat or a place to live. There was a pause, and then my son said from the back seat, “That is so sad.”
Four words. So simple and yet so profound. Unlike many of us who have become desensitized over time to the reality of homelessness, my young son immediately recognized someone else’s shared humanity and was “moved with pity” at the modern-day leprosies of hunger and homelessness.
I have never contemplated Jesus’ teaching that we must be like children in light of today’s gospel. How does this childlike lens change today’s reading? Perhaps Jesus—always a fan of showing rather than telling—is demonstrating that teaching in action here with the leper—boundless empathy.
Lord, like Jesus, please enrich our capacity to become childlike and be “moved with pity” at the leprosies of our modern world.
Prayer
Protect us, Lord, from thinking that our healing depends on the strength and frequency of our prayers. Help us remember and proclaim to the world by our lives that through your Son, you will it now and always that we be made and remain clean of heart and spirit. We make this prayer in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. Vitalis was a hermit monk in Gaza in the 600s. In his old age, he felt called to travel to Alexandria, Egypt, to serve the many prostitutes there. He would work as a laborer during the day, then hire a prostitute with the wages he earned and ask her to spend the night with him without sin. If she would listen, he would ask her to pray and he would teach her about the faith and her human dignity. He made the women promise not to tell anyone about the evening.
This approach led to much controversy and gossip, but every charge was investigated and he was cleared of any impropriety. It was said that many prostitutes were saved to become wives and mothers.
One night, a man misunderstood Vitalis’ intentions at a brothel, and struck him on the head. The monk managed to return to his hut and died alone there from the wound.
In today's world, a group of nuns who pose as prostitutes to rescue women and children from the human trafficking industry—they are known as Talitha Kum and are active in more than 140 countries.
The relics of a martyr named Vitalis rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica, though there are several martyrs with that name in the canon of saints.
St. Vitalis, you died saving prostitutes from exploitation, pray for us!