And even now his heart is brimming over with tenderness and compassion, indulgence and mercy for us, because, he sees that we too are “troubled and abandoned.” Jesus sees into our hearts, knows all the stories we are He sees our confusion, pain, and incompleteness, our sinfulness, and his heart goes out to us. His heart is magnetized by our need for him.
The heart of Jesus is always riven by the cry of the poor, and this morning his compassion expresses itself as he cures this leper. Perhaps what Jesus is doing best of all is returning this afflicted and isolated fellow back to ordinariness. Jesus’ healing restores him to family and friends. Blessed ordinariness is after all where he always comes to meet us.
God only wants to be ordinary.
It is why Jesus has come, God with us, near us, in us. The ordinary is charged
forever with his kind, incessant presence. God longs to be ordinary, not taken for granted, but here, always here
with us. Why else would he choose to be a child, why else a carpenter and a
wandering teacher? Why else allow himself to be done in by thugs and jealous
bureaucrats? Why else choose to be hidden in a morsel of bread on our altar?
Photograph by Brother Brian.
