Patrick Comerford
The 40-day season of Christmas continues until Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation (2 February). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Mary Slessor (1915), Missionary in West Africa, and tomorrow is the First Sunday of Epiphany (12 January 2025), when the readings focus on the Baptism of Christ.
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Luke 5: 12-16 (NRSVA):
12 Once, when he was in one of the cities, there was a man covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he bowed with his face to the ground and begged him, ‘Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.’ 13 Then Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, ‘I do choose. Be made clean.’ Immediately the leprosy left him. 14 And he ordered him to tell no one. ‘Go’, he said, ‘and show yourself to the priest, and, as Moses commanded, make an offering for your cleansing, for a testimony to them.’ 15 But now more than ever the word about Jesus spread abroad; many crowds would gather to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. 16 But he would withdraw to deserted places and pray.
Today’s Reflection:
Saint Luke’s account of Jesus healing the man with leprosy comes an early point in Christ’s ministry. Matthew says the man approached Jesus as he ‘came down from the mountainside’ (Matthew 8: 1), Mark does not offer a location other than Galilee (Mark 1: 39), but Luke says they are in a city. All three synoptic Gospels agree that the man has faith that Jesus can make him clean, but he is not sure whether Jesus wants to.
This setting, with man inside the city, challenges the general perception of the regulations in Jewish law concerning people with leprosy. ‘The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be dishevelled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp’ (Leviticus 13: 45-46).
Some historians claimed the Mosaic law excluded people with leprosy from any cities. However, the Talmud only banned them from entering walled cities. We have little information about which, if any, cities in Galilee were enclosed by walls.
It is possible that the man had remained outside the city but came in again, defying the community’s laws, expectations and safety measures, to see Jesus and to seek healing.
Saint Luke is that the man was ‘covered with leprosy.’ he was a physician (‘the beloved physician’, see Colossians 4: 14), then perhaps Luke could have been more precise in his description of medical conditions. If this man had the form of leprosy now known as ‘Hansen's disease’, this would imply an advanced, near-lethal stage. Those suffering with leprosy can experience sores and ulcers over their face, hands, and body. This would have resulted in great social stigma, as well as much personal suffering.
Today, 95% of the world population is naturally immune to leprosy. As for the 5% who can get it, many of them live in tropical, overpopulated, underdeveloped areas like Brazil, China and India. Nobody really knows or understands how it is spread, but one common factor is prolonged close contact with someone who has it. You do not get it from hugging someone with leprosy or share a meal with one. And for those who do contract leprosy, there medical treatments in developed countries that can cure leprosy.
Even so, people with leprosy – then and now – are often cast out from society, rejected, feared, despised, neglected and scorned.
I have visited the island of Spinalónga, in the calm Bay of Mirabello and off the north-east coast of Crete. The island is still remembered as Europe’s last active leprosy colony.
Spinalónga was transformed into a leprosy colony in 1903. Until then, Crete’s leprosy patients had often lived in caves or were banished to areas known as meskinies, away from their families and civilisation, without appropriate or adequate medical care.
At his own personal expense, the Greek Prime Minister, Eleftheríos Venizélos, sent a doctor to India and the Philippines to learn about the latest methods of treating leprosy, but subsequent governments did little to change the conditions of the inhabitants.
There were two entrances to Spinalónga: the ‘lepers’ entrance’ was a tunnel known as ‘Dante’s Gate’ because fretful patients did not know what would happen to them after their arrival. Once on the island, they received food, water, medical attention and social security payments. But they were forbidden family visits, fishing was prohibited, and letters were callously disinfected before being posted. The residents ran their own shops, cafés and bazaar, but they were forbidden to marry, and children born on the island were soon separated from their parents.
Little was done to change those conditions even when the discovery of a new drug in America in 1948 offered the hope of a cure. Spinalónga remained a leprosy colony for nine more years, although these advances in medicine meant isolation was no longer appropriate, and care remained rudimentary. The priests who lived with the people were often their most vocal advocates, and the Brotherhood of the Sick of Spinalónga led to many of their demands being met.
The colony finally closed in 1957. The last inhabitant to leave the island was a priest – he had stayed on until 1962 to continue the traditions and rites of the Greek Orthodox Church, in which a dead person is commemorated at intervals of 40 days, six months, a year, three years and five years after death.
There are no souvenir shops on the island, no trinkets to buy and take away. But as I left, I had many questions:
Who do we isolate in cruel ways today?
Who do we cast outside our community, pretending they pose the risk of contamination?
Who, like the priests of Spinalónga are going to speak out for them in the Church today, and to stay with them long after death?
Today’s Prayers (Saturday 11 January 2025):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been ‘The Melanesian Brotherhood Centenary’. This theme was introduced last Sunday with a Programme Update by Ella Sibley, Regional Manager for Europe and Oceania, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 11 January 2025) invites us to pray:
Heavenly Father, we commit the next 100 years of the Melanesian Brotherhood into your hands, praying for continued growth, grace, and impact for your Kingdom.
The Collect:
O God,
who by the leading of a star
manifested your only Son to the peoples of the earth:
mercifully grant that we,
who know you now by faith,
may at last behold your glory face to face;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Lord God,
the bright splendour whom the nations seek:
may we who with the wise men have been drawn by your light
discern the glory of your presence in your Son,
the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Creator of the heavens,
who led the Magi by a star
to worship the Christ-child:
guide and sustain us,
that we may find our journey’s end
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Collect on the Eve of Baptism of Christ:
Eternal Father,
who at the baptism of Jesus
revealed him to be your Son,
anointing him with the Holy Spirit:
grant to us, who are born again by water and the Spirit,
that we may be faithful to our calling as your adopted children;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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