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Thursday, January 12, 2017

Bishop Barron's Daily Gospel Reflection January 12, 2017

Your daily Advent reflection...
Thursday, January 12, 2017
1st Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Mark 1:40-45
Friends, our Gospel for today has to do with Jesus’ healing of a leper. Leprosy frightened people in ancient times—as contagious and mysterious diseases frightened people up until modern times. But more than this, it rendered someone unclean and therefore incapable of engaging in the act of worship. It is not accidental that the person who should do the examining of the patient in ancient Israel should be the priest.

The man who knelt before Jesus and begged for a cure was not simply concerned about his medical condition; he was an Israelite in exile from the temple—and hence he was a very apt symbol of the general condition of scattered, exiled, wandering Israel. In curing him, Jesus was, symbolically speaking, gathering the tribes and bringing them back to the worship of the true God.

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