Human beings are rational animals, and our reason and our feelings, our passions, are meant to be integrated in life to reach a certain goal. For us, of course, that goal is eternal life with God. So it is right that we should have passions such as love, anger, fear, joy, sadness and desire – but these passions are to be engaged for the right reason and to the correct extent. Here, Jesus is our example. We know that Jesus felt anger when He cleansed the Temple. He wept with sadness at the death of Lazarus, and wept over Jerusalem. He felt joy and sorrow. In Jesus, we see the perfect integration of feeling and reason. In today’s Gospel reading we have a very good example of this. In fact, His deep feeling and His firm purpose of doing good are perfectly matched. His humanity is joined to the fullness of His divinity. Even thourgh the agony of Gethsemane and the horror of the cross, reason and feeling in Jesus are perfectly integrated.
It is a different for other human beings. We often experience the discord between reason and emotion. We often choose the lesser good instead of the higher. Yet as Christians we recognize our failings and our need for healing. The leper in the story could easily be a symbol for us. He recognizes Jesus as the source of his healing, he kneels reverently before Him and asks for His salvation. We can imagine ourselves doing the same and hearing the same beautiful reply, “Of course I want to! Be cured!†It is no accident that Jesus sends the cured man to priests, and tells him to fulfill the Law. Jesus is situating the man’s physical healing in the context of the worship of God. Today the sacraments do essentially the same thing. There is the sacrament of anointing, especially for those who are sick and dying. The sacrament of reconciliation heals the wounds that we inflict on ourselves by sin. In the sacrifice of the Mass, Christ is substantially present to offer us His grace. Our life is a gradual healing of the whole person, our heart and mind. So we give thanks to Christ who heals the leper in today’s Gospel, and who heals us with His grace and love.