Thank you, Deacon Lydia Martin, for your powerful proclamation of life.
The Gospel of Luke is filled with stories of Jesus meeting people's needs as more important than proper observance of the law. Jesus rejects no one, even lepers, social and spiritual outcasts in Jesus day. Jesus saw them as people, beyond their disease. Jesus did for them what the law could not do: he healed them. In this story, one leper returns to Jesus with thanksgiving, and the thankfulness becomes full healing for him. He is no longer an invisible leper, but a whole upright person. Maybe he became God's voice of wholeness to other outcasts.
