Halfway through the month of February – Valentine’s Day, actually – the Church offers readings that are very relevant to our lives during this period of COVID. The scripture readings for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (February 14, 2021) deal with leprosy, both in Old and New Testament times. It’s difficult not to prevent our minds from wandering to thoughts of our contemporary plague. And, as LGBTQ individuals, it’s difficult to avoid memories of AIDS and its physical ravages and social shunning. COVID, leprosy, and AIDS all leave scars, some physical and some at an interior level.
We’re inundated today with the language of masks, face coverings, hand sanitizer, physical distancing, isolation, quarantine, bubbles, and so on. There’s been public outrage over politicians and other leaders and individuals who have disregarded government and health official guidelines by travelling outside their area or for ignoring guidelines about safety measures. My assumption is that when this is all over, there’ll be a shelf full of books detailing and analyzing the years 2020 and 2021. Early in the pandemic, I read Daniel Defoe’s account of the 1665 bubonic plague that struck the City of London. A Journal of the Plague Year reveals some amazing similarities with our time, even though several hundred years separate these events.
As LGBTQ individuals, it’s difficult to avoid memories of AIDS and its physical ravages and social shunning.
I live just a hundred meters from our Jesuit infirmary. If the Jesuits who live there have communicable diseases, such as COVID or even a bad case of stomach flu, they’re kept in isolation and there are safety precautions – for their own sake and for the sake of an innocent visitor who doesn’t want a bout of gastroenteritis or whatever else is going around. These COVID days, they have to be in a period of isolation if they’ve gone to a hospital for a simple procedure. Modern health care facilities have all kinds of precautions for patients with diseases that can spread like wildfire. Outside visitors aren’t allowed, but if they approached the front door, they’d be met with a sign alerting the potential visitor to the dangers that lurk inside. That notice from the department of public health is basically a polite version of what we hear about the leper in the reading from Leviticus. “Unclean, unclean! That person shall remain unclean as long as the disease persists; and being unclean, such a one shall live alone with their dwelling outside the camp.” Today we find ways of being with people without sending them outside the camp.
Outside the camp. Unclean. LGBTQ individuals are no strangers to being shunned, considered unclean or outsiders. Sadly enough, the experience can even be at the hands of family members. Those old enough can probably tell haunting stories from the early days of AIDS. Even in the absence of that disease, there has been rejection and banishment for LGBTQ persons. It has nothing to do with illness. It has nothing to do with being a threat to another person. Rather, it’s based on the simple fact of our differences from one another.
Let’s live with the same compassion and pity as Jesus. He sends no one outside the camp. He shuns no one. He judges no one.
I had the privilege of working with lepers and tuberculosis patients at Jesu Ashram, in Matigara, India. This was for a few months in the early nineties, when I was in the Jesuit stage of formation known as tertianship. Jesu Ashram provides free medical treatment and care to destitute sick people, especially those living with leprosy, tuberculosis, or HIV/AIDS. Jesu Ashram was established in 1971, in the Jesuit Province of Darjeeling. It was established by Canadian Jesuit Brother Robert Mittelholtz (from Southern Ontario). No one is running around shouting, “unclean!” Jesu Ashram is tremendously welcoming and friendly.
Jesus is also welcoming in that Gospel for February 14.
“A man with leprosy came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling said to Jesus, ‘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!’”
Let’s live with the same compassion and pity as Jesus. He sends no one outside the camp. He shuns no one. He judges no one. We’re approaching the Season of Lent, a time for looking inward to see the ways we’re invited to come back to God. The hope is that inward glance will bring about changes in how we live our lives. Can we accept the invitation to deeper compassion, to a complete care for the strangers in our culture, to reaching out to those in our lives?
