“Sacramental Reconciliation and Healing: ‘Go, show yourself to the priest.’”  Beloved, God is our ultimate healer; but God uses His appointed human instruments – priests – as agents of reconciliation and to welcome reconciled sinners into the faith community.  At the time of Moses, leprosy was a disease with dire consequences; worse than Ebola or COVID 19.  Victims were declared “unclean”, treated as outcasts, and ostracized from family, friends and the community. One was stripped of all human dignity and right to self-affirmation and association; evident in the First Reading (Lev 13:1-2, 44-48): “The one who bears the sore of leprosy shall keep his garments rent and his head bare, and shall muffle his beard; he shall cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean!’… He shall dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp.”  What a predicament!  Only the Old Testament priests – Aaron and other Levitical priests – could declare a person cured and permitted to return to the community.

Under this background, we can appreciate the magnitude of favor Jesus – the Eternal High Priest – did for the leper in the Gospel Passage (Mk 1:40-45): He had approached Jesus, knelt down before Him and pleaded, saying, ‘If you wish, you can make me clean.’  Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, ‘I do will it. Be made clean.’  The leprosy left him immediately.”  Wow!  Jesus made it seem so easy.  He even dispensed of all the conventional protocols (use of sanitizer, physical or social distancing) and touched him.  Wow!  Instead of leprosy affecting Jesus, power came out of Him to destroy the leprosy; He gave the man his life back, his dignity.  Yet Jesus insisted on the role of the Levitical priests to certify a person cured and fit to be reintegrated into the community.  So, He ordered the man: “Go, show yourself to the priest.”

Beloved, sin, especially mortal sin, is spiritual leprosy with dire spiritual consequences.  It alienates us from God, separates us from families and friends, and may even excommunicate us from the Church, whether we realize it or not.  One becomes a spiritual outcast, spiritually “unclean.”  Just consider sins of wickedness, sex trafficking, child abuse, racism, tribalism, abortion, domestic violence and the likes?  To die in mortal sin, without repentance, one may incur everlasting death (cf. CCC 1033).  Just like the leper, let us come to Jesus with our burden of sin and say, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.”  Christ – who is passionately interested in saving souls – will definitely stretch out His hands and touch us and say, “I do will it.  Be make clean” and our sins will disappear, through the instrumentality of His Ministerial Priests in the Holy Catholic Church (cf. 2Cor 5:17-19).  Christ already granted them the power to cure us from mortal sins, spiritual leprosy: “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:22-23).  Only they can pronounce you forgiven and fit to fellowship with the community: Accordingly, Jesus is ordering you and I, “Go, show yourself to the priest.”  

Amazingly, some Christians say “I can’t confess to a human being.”  Beloved, Jesus granted the Apostles the power to forgive sins.  Were they not humans?  Or are we smarter than Jesus?  Some claim, “A sinner cannot forgive my sins.”  Baloney!  Remember the “Our Father” prayer Jesus taught us: “Our Father… Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us” (Matt 6:12).  Did you get that?  God not only willed that a sinner can forgive another sinner’s sins against him or her; but also, such forgiveness is required as a condition for God to forgive the person’s sin (cf. Matt 6:14-15; 18:35).  The Apostles had personal sins and admitted them (Luke 5:8; Rom 7:14-15); they denied Jesus during His Passion and Death!  Yet the very evening Jesus rose from the dead, He granted them “PEACE,” forgave them and gave them the power to forgive people’s sins. Wow!  Scripture says: “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (James 5:16).  The priest is still one of us the last time I checked (Heb 5:1-3). 

On the whole, therefore, if anyone has become “unclean” or has become spiritual sick through mortal sin, “Go for confession to a priest” or “Call a priest for confession” (cf. James 5:14-15).  Remember, as the body of Christ, my sin affects you and your sins affect me: “If one member suffers, all suffer together” (1Cor 12:26).  Nowhere in the Bible were we told that we can handle it alone in our room! Did you baptize yourself in your room?  In fact, Christ declared, “If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matt 5:23-24).  The Catholic priest, acting in the name of God and His People (Heb 5:1-3), reconciles you “with your brothers and sisters,” then, with God and declares you fit to rejoin the Church.  So, “Go, show yourself to the priest” and receive God’s mercy in abundance.  Amen.