6th Sunday, Ordinary Time.
The first reading today describes to us how a leper is banished from the community. He is declared unclean. He is to “keep his garments rent and his beard bare” and “muffle his beard.” He is to shout, “Unclean, unclean!” His abode is outside the camp. For the Jews, a leper is an unclean outcast.
And so, when Jesus “made clean” a leper in the gospel today, the leper was not only healed from his illness, but he was given a place in the community. In Jesus, the leper found freedom from separation, from isolation, and from loneliness. He received his health back and his community.
I believe it is everybody’s experience that we are afraid to be isolated, frightened to be separated, and fearful from being alone. Philosophers would say that we are social beings. Our faith asserts that we are God’s people, Bayan ng Diyos.
So, it is important to ask, what constitutes a community? How can we say that we are a community? What criterion is to be used?
Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, OP, in his book What is the Point of Being a Christian?, mentions one important characteristic of being a community, that is, mutuality. A community is where one loves and is loved, respects and is respected, helps and is helped, values and is valued, supports and is supported, serves and is served, believes and is believed in, hopes and gives hope. Being with people is not community. Being surrounded with people who loves you, helps you, serves you, and not returning the same in mutuality is not community. Community is mutual loving, helping, serving, believing, supporting, and hoping. And if our families is not like this, if our neighborhood is not like this, if our parish is not like this, if our barangay is not like this, then, we are not yet a community, and we have the duty to grow into one.
If feels great to be loved and be served, but if we stop there we live selfish lives, for it feels even greater, to be able to love and serve in return. For to be community is to be in mutuality. To be in community is to overcome isolation, separation and loneliness. In a genuine community no one becomes a leper; no one has his abode outside the camp.
