Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Love is infectious, but is it real? Feelings, passions, and desires create affections, but are they enduring or fleeting? The intensity of love creates bonds quickly. Wrapped together, loves tentacles slide around our bodies, into our hearts, penetrating our minds, and embracing our feelings. It feels so right.
“Sinful love,” as Karol Wojtyla writes, “is very often affective; it is saturated with affection which supplants everything else in that love” (Love and Responsibility, p. 191). Affection is not sinful, but the placing the affections over the person is. Affections rule, not the value and goodness of the person. In fact, the value and goodness of the person become the very source of heightened affection. Instead of valuing the person above affection, sinful love seeks solely the affection—the arousal—which comes from the value of the person. The person becomes the playmate to create the passions, desires, and feelings of affection. As Karol explains, “’using’ ousts “loving’” (Love and Responsibility, p. 192).
Sinful love “violates the integrity of the human person and “insults human dignity” (Evangelium Vitae # 3) It diminishes our dignity thwarting the value and goodness of the person. It is narcissistic dominating the other for my benefit. Sadly, many approve of this vision of love, even claiming it is not sinful, but honorable. Yet, using another person for gain breaks the categorical imperative. “Act that you use humanity . . . at the same time as an end, never merely as a means” (Immanuel Kant). Using another is a “definitive self-exclusion from communion” (CCC 1033). This becomes hell, to be used by another stealing your love for their gain. In this light, love becomes lovelessness.
Sincere love, on the other hand, never uses the other but always serves the other seeking their goodness despite any feelings. The person loved is honored and dignified for they are valued not as a “toy” to be played with, but as a person to be cherished. Sincere love converts sinful love into a most powerful and dynamic affirmation of the beauty and goodness of the person loved. The affections that arise from the beauty and goodness of the person only affirm his dignity and value.
Jesus sincerely loves and responds. The lame, the blind, and possessed came to Him, wanting healing from the sinful love they experienced. Lepers may have suffered the worst. Isolated, rejected, outcasted, condemned as a contagion, no one dared to love them sincerely. Yet, Jesus does. He talks to the leper, touches him, and moved with sincere love states, “I will; Be clean” (Mark 1:41).
Lost in a sea of turmoil, the leper cries out for help. He has nothing. He lost everything and threw himself at the feet of Jesus begging. With a simple word, Jesus makes him whole.
A total transformation takes place. No longer a contagion to society, the leper becomes a witness—martyr—of Jesus power. He takes the incurable disease and cures it, without display. His words effect his work. He speaks and changes occur. He, as St. John tells us, is the Word and the Word was God and “all things were made through him” (John 1:3). Jesus is God and re-creates our ignominies: diseases, disgraces, and dishonors, into his divine dignity. This is mercy: the sincerity of love that sees the disintegration of sinful love and acts to restore our value.
Mercy forgives another’s faults or failures, and restores what was lost through sinful love. Sinful love comes from within our hearts. It is not what enters a person that defiles him, as Jesus teaches, but what comes out of a man.
“From within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness” (Mk 7:21–23).
Leprosy, the outward appearance of an inward disease, called sinful love, cries out for mercy. Like leprosy, nothing can cure sinful love. It is vulgar and foul. Ultimately, it defiles our heart. Yet, Jesus despoils this defilement, affirming that nothing, not even the disgusting disease of leprosy, can prevent his mercy from penetrating our sinful hearts.
Mercy saves, for it does not deem a person unworthy, but in fact, the more unworthy, the more deserving we are of Jesus’ mercy. He comes not to condemn, but to heal. He comes to the sick, not the well. He enters our misery to restore our dignity. Our restoration comes from his sincere love, an act of mercy that restores goodness because Jesus has restorative goodness to give.
To receive his sincere love, repentance is necessary. Sincere repentance sees the sinful love that we commit and maybe more important, receive. Repentance first examines the leprosy within our heart. It cannot justify or excuse any action that does not create sincere love. Repentance examines and re-examines our heart with an intensity as does any leper examining his body, seeking for signs of healing. It explores not only the choices and acts, but also the intentions and circumstances ensuring that nothing defiling enters, nor comes out of the heart. If it does, repentance exposes it to the mercy of Jesus immediately, begging for healing.
Repentance also examines the sinful love experienced. Being used as an object, deceived by another’s sinful love, harms. It pierces our hearts as a dagger in the back. Manipulated, we demand justice. The other owes us for they defiled us. They infected our hearts with their sinful love. Demanding justice is righteous and needed, but sincere love, imitating the heart of Jesus, offers forgiveness too. Repentance examines our unforgiveness of those who have infected our hearts with sinful love. Recognizing and repenting of this venomous injection transforms our hearts from merely being clean of defilement, to hearts purified for perfection. This is the wholeness—integrity—we, as did the leper, implore.
Sincere love shares divine love. It makes us whole. Solidarity exists in that we who once loved sinfully, now love sincerely as we have experienced the power and beauty of divine love. As Jesus touches the leper, He touches us, willing that our hearts be clean, that our hearts be whole, but most important, our heart imitate his, being meek and humble filled with the dynamism of merciful love.