“If You Wish, You Can Make Me Clean”
(Mk 1:40-45)
Dear
Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
We, as
devoted Christians, not only pray often, but love to pray and consider praying
a vital way to build close and intimate relationship with God. Besides, we also, through prayer, present to
the Lord our needs and ask Him for blessing, help and guidance.
However, not
always our petitions are answered as expected no matter how long and hard we
have prayed.
The reasons
why we pray with little, if not no, result are the following:
First, we
pray for things which are unworthy.
Christ
taught us to look for things in heaven as the first priority of our life,
saying: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these
things will be given you besides.”[1] It seems that we when praying do the opposite. We are more concerned and worried about
things in this life than things in the afterlife, things temporary than things
eternal.
Second, the
ways in which we pray are unworthy.
Let us
listen to how the man with leprosy in this Sunday Gospel prays to Jesus. Indeed, he says: “If you wish, you can make
me clean.” We do know how painful and
humiliated the man has been when contracted with such a disease. He has been isolated from society and even
from his family. He suffers physically:
feeling the decomposition of his body; psychologically: living in shame, anger,
and loss; and spiritually: thinking of God’s severe punishment. Who but he himself needs healing as fast as
possible to be freed from all forms of suffering stated above? Who but the very miserable person urgently
thirsts for the restoration of his dignity in the community of believers, and
the respect for his role in society, and his love and care for and service to
his family? Regardless of all these good
reasons, he still prays to the Lord: “If you wish.” It is only with great confidence in Christ’s
merciful heart and powerful compassion that the man prays that way. It is his perfect obedience to God’s holy
will that teaches him to let God decide on everything concerning his own life.
We, on the
contrary, pray the way the Pharisees do, taking the opportunity to show up our
achievements, making an exchange, a trade of interests, based on the merits
which we think our service of the Lord God has gained. It becomes worse when we in praying command
God to do our will, offer Him bribe, even threaten Him with punishment for
failing to satisfy our needs. Sometimes,
we prove that we do not threaten alone but we do stop praying, even quit going
to church, simply because God ignores our petitions.
Third, we
who pray are unworthy.
We approach
the Lord God in a state of sinfulness—a form of moral and spiritual leprosy—and
we still dare to ask Him for everything that we need but His mercy and
forgiveness. Saint Paul teaches that
when we have sinned, we are no longer friend but enemy of God.
The message
of this Sunday Gospel is, therefore, a reminder of how we should pray with
humble heart and obedient mind in order for our prayer to be acceptable to the
Lord God.
Fr. Francis Nguyen, O.P.
