Father Ken’s Message:
Good afternoon, everyone and welcome to the Catholic Cathedral of Sapporo. Today’s First Reading and Gospel Reading are about leprosy, which is now referred to as “Hansen’s Disease” in tribute to the researcher who identified the bacillus of leprosy under the microscope. Before starting my second career as a priest I was a nurse. And as a Catholic nurse volunteer I worked at The Korean National Leprosy Hospital on SorokDo (island) for 12 years. So, I kind of feel like I am an expert on the subject of leprosy. On the other hand, I know nothing about the terrible experience of having leprosy.
But first I need two volunteers to demonstrate how to diagnose leprosy in the field. I studied leprosy in India, the USA, and in Japan and the basic test is the same everywhere; you use a feather. The goal is to discover areas of insensitivity to pain which is a sign of leprosy. So, when I tested for leprosy, I would ask the person to close their eyes and extend their arms out straight and tell me when they can feel the feather touching them. After wards I would cut the skin in that area and take blood samples to examine for the presence of the leprosy bacillus. We have two drugs to combat leprosy. The cheap one is Dapsone and the expensive one is a Rifampicin. There are two types of the disease “L” type” and “T” type. L type patients must take the Dapsone everyday for the rest of their lives. But Rifampicin if the leprosy is discovered early enough might result in a full cure. The problem is it causes sin discoloration in the areas with the leprosy bacillus. Besides the medicine, patient’s need good daily physical therapy with hot wax massage. Leprosy lives inside of the nerves of the body and that has three bad consequences to the body: cannot feel in the areas affected; cannot move parts of the body where the leprosy kills the nerves; and they do not sweat either in the areas affected by the leprosy leading to dryness of the skin. It is similar in this way to Diabetes. Many leprosy victims are blind. Many loose their legs because of ulcers on their feet. Many loose their fingers and toes because of burns which they cannot feel and because the calcium in the bones breaks down and is reabsorbed into the body leaving a paw like a dog on many of the victims. On your cover sheet I have a photo of one of my patients, Maria. She is hiding her hands in the photo because they are like paws and she has no legs. My 3500 patients were forcefully sent away from their homes to the island. This is the patient image that Jesus encountered in the Gospel today.
For us medical professionals understanding the etiology of Leprosy in the 20th and 21st centuries lessen our fear in approaching our patients by head knowledge, but for Jesus 2000 years ago to touch communicable diseased victims must have been amazing for the people that witnessed this encounter because it was one of the most dreaded diseases at the time. Jesus’ action restored self-respect to the man with leprosy, made him feel normal again and ended his alienation from society.
I think the readings today are not to teach us 21st century Catholics about leprosy, but about love. Leprosy is used today as a symbol of rejected people in the world today and in our own lives: sad people; poor people; hated people; strange people; needy people; nasty people; annoying people; and disgusting people in many ways that get under our skin and we avoid like the plague itself. Jesus had no medicine to give the man only his attention, time and love. I think we can all do that to the stigmatized people in society today to let them know that they are loved for the person inside of their problems.
I lived in a poor island leprosarium for 12 years giving care, changing dressings to the insensitive bodies of the patients entrusted to my care but I could not touch them to show my love for them because they could not feel it. The way I touched them was through gentle words of encouragement and by listening to their stories of pain and loneliness. What I learned from working with leprosy for 12 years is that we healthy persons also have a type of disease of insensitivity in our hearts to others when we let fear separate us from the people who need help in our lives.
My friends as we enter Lent this week on Ash Wednesday let us follow the model of our brother Jesus and heal ourselves and others through using the power of love in us to overcome the fear in us and between us. For that reason, I really like Elton John’s song, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” The yellow brick road as you recall from the Wizard of Oz story was supposed to be the road back home for Dorothy. But often in our human stories we cannot go back home either physically or mentally after traumas and bad experiences like the man with leprosy in the Gospel today. But as Catholics we are luckily to have a second place to call “home,” our Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is our “Noah’s Ark” in times of problems when family, friends, our places of employment, society and the world hate us and push us away. At those times we can always find shelter and love inside God’s House. We are welcomed at any Catholic Church around the world. All of you visitors this afternoon are evidence of this miracle of Catholicism. God our Father in Heaven through his intelligence and super love for us sent Jesus to set up this system of salvation to remind us that somebody does care about us when everyone else does not. That is the purpose of Jesus’ miracles in the Gospels.
When I worked at the leprosarium, I witness this miracle. Even though the patient’s bodies were abandoning them, inside God was reviving them with his love to take away their spiritual pain and they found new families and friends among the other patients and us medical staff in the Church on the island. My friends the purpose of Lent is to remember our other homes, the Church and Heaven because we all are heaven-bound by destiny. Let us use our short time on Earth like Mary and Jesus to try to improve the quality of life for the people around us by kindness, gentle words, touch, and prayers.
Thank you and God bless you.
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