The Leper

I wonder how many of us are “comfortable in our own skin”? Are we content with our bodies – the shape and size of our physical attributes? According to Robert Crampton in the Times recently - the number of men undergoing plastic surgery has almost doubled in the past decade. Crampton wrote “I’ve never worried about my eyelids until now…" We may change the way we look, what is more difficult is to change how we feel about how we look….

Mark 1:40-41         

A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!”

 

The Leper     

He touched me

Aware only of my own hideousness

Features taut, tucked and twisted

Distorted

Smooth knobbles

That once were hands

Once were feet

And worse…

Aware only of my own filthiness

Barely dressed in rags

Offensive

Encrusted in dirt

And lice

And fleas

I had no beauty to attract him to me

Nothing in my appearance

That he should desire me

of no value

to others

or myself

Despised and rejected

by others

and myself

On my knees I met him

and

When no one else would

He touched me

Though my limbs are numb

He touched me

Where it hurt the most

He touched me

…and I am clean

“You are mine, my beloved

With you I am well pleased”

Ronald Rohlheiser 2005

“Ancient philosophers and mystics used to say that before being born each soul is kissed by God and then goes through life always, in some dark way remembering that kiss… inside each of us, there is a dark memory of having once been touched and caressed by hands far gentler than our own…  that caress… so tender and good that its memory becomes a prism through which we see everything else.”