Jesus, Touch Me!
Friday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time
My dear encountered couples:
Jesus cured the leper, who then went and showed his appreciation to God by offering the gift Moses prescribed. Or at least we hope he did. Jesus told him to. How often do we pray for something, our prayers get answered, but we neglect thanking God?
Do you ever pray to get rid of a cold or the flu, take some pills and get cured, and then give more credit to the pills than to God? Have you ever found yourself praying for your house and your family to be kept safe from a storm that is predicted to bring hail and lightning, tornadoes and flash floods, and then when you come safely through it turn to criticize the weather people as alarmists instead of turning to thank God? Maybe we all to some measure give more credit to medical and naturally caused answers to our prayers than we do to the creator of medicine and nature.
Today, people might argue over whether the man in our gospel story really had leprosy or not. Maybe it was only a skin rash of some kind, which would have been cured by natural causes in a few days without Jesus. It made no difference to that man. He knew he was cured of whatever it was when he experienced Jesus touching him. Nobody was going to make him believe otherwise.
However our prayers are answered, in whatever way good fortune comes into our lives, is it not because God made it happen? Nothing good can happen to any of us without God willing it and bringing it about. Nothing good happens to us without God touching us either directly with his divine power or indirectly through his earthly creations. God is the source of every answer to our prayers. Let us never forget to give him credit.
