05 March: Mon. of Week 3 of Lent
(Saint Kieran, bishop)
1st Reading: 2 Kings (5:1-15)
Naaman takes the prophet’s advice and is cured of leprosy
Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favour with his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, “Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.”
He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.” When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.”
But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.” So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.” But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clen’?” So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.
Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel; please accept a present from your servant.”
Responsorial Psalm (from Ps 42)
Response: My soul is thirsting for the living God. When shall I see him face to face?
As the deer longs for running streams,
so my soul is longing for you, O God. (R./)
My soul is thirsting for God, the living God.
When shall I go and behold the face of God? (R./)
Send forth your light and your fidelity;
they shall lead me on
And bring me to your holy mountain,
to your dwelling-place. (R./)
Then will I go in to the altar of God,
the God of my gladness and joy;
Then will I give you thanks upon the harp,
O God, my God! (R./)
Gospel: Luke (4:24-30)
Nazareth turns against Jesus; for no prophet is accepted in his own home town
Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
One firm anchor
Leprosy (Hansen’s disease) was a terrible scourge, which thank God has almost entirely disappeared. Contrary to popular belief, it is not very contagious, but the Gospel mentions how widespread it was in times past: “There were many lepers in the time of Elisha.” Poor Naaman had almost given up hope of a cure. He had tried everything and now seemed to be rejected by Elisha, his last hope of a miracle cure. He was on his way home, angry and discontented, when his staff begged him to just do the simple thing that the prophet advised, and bathe in the Jordan river. His story teaches that no situation is ever completely hopeless.
English actor Stephen Fry gave a scorching rant recently, on Irish television. He described the tongue-lashing he would give to God .. if there was a God .. for making such a cruelly unjust world. To his mind, if this world was made by God, what a hopeless mess he made of it. The worldview Jesus offers is very different. He invites us to see the positives in life (Lilies of the field, birds of the air, the seasons of harvest, the joy of children; and then practice mercy and love, grateful for life’s blessings.
The darker side of life (sickness, misfortune, loneliness, betrayal by others, the pains of old age) is also there, of course. And we are asked to embrace these in a spirit of faith, as sharing in the cross of Christ. Accepting with patience what we cannot change has a saving power of its own. The other great teacher of hope was the apostle Paul: “All of creation groaning in one great act of giving birth..”
Hope is badly needed in our times. Disillusion with politicians; distrust of church leaders; frustration at the inability of our Health Service to provide early treatment. . . and the high rates of drug and alcohol abuse among young people. These are times for keeping up Hope, in spite of circumstances, including in marriages where there’s conflict. . .. or when a partner dies and one is left to get on with life. Even when a relationship has ended, one does not have to just slide into a decline. No matter what age we’re at, we look for new wellsprings of hope, for ourselves and for others. If, like Naaman, we put aside our pride and trust in the Lord, he will never let us down.
Not a narrow-minded God
Jesus challenges the rather narrow view that his townspeople of Nazareth had of God. Just as they felt that Jesus belonged to them, “Do here in your home town the things we heard you did in Capernaum,” so they felt that God belonged to the people of Israel. When Jesus reminded them of a couple of passages in the Scriptures where God seemed to favour the pagans over the Jewish people they did not like it, and in response they forcibly ejected Jesus out of Nazareth. His rejection in Nazareth anticipated his even more brutal rejection in Jerusalem.
The people of Nazareth’s God was too small and Jesus was seeking to broaden their understanding of God. He wanted them to realize, in the words of Peter in the Acts of the Apostles, that “God has no favourites.” The God of Jesus was more generous, more expansive, more inclusive than people realized. Jesus was always trying to show people that there was much more to God than they imagined. He is more like the father in the parable of the prodigal son than his is like the elder son. Jesus’ vision of God remains challenging for us today, but it is a vision of God that is fundamentally “good news” for all who are willing to receive it.
