Friday after Epiphany
Today’s Gospel can teach us something very important about prayer. Here a leper approaches Jesus, saying, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean,” to which Jesus replies, “I do will it. Be made clean.” It may be difficult to believe, but God does not want bad things to happen to us; He wants for us what is good. That is the very nature of love: to desire the good for the other, purely for their own sake. While in the time of Jesus, the prevalent thought was that those who suffered misfortune were being punished for their sins, this was hardly the case; this story of a leper proves that God did not want the man to have leprosy at all, for as soon as the leper desired healing and approached the Son of God—in faith!—to be healed, He was healed. When we pray, can we have that same faith, that same trust, that prayer is not about convincing our Father in Heaven that our cause is worth His attention, interest, and investment, but rather prayer is about a child of God reaching out to their Father who, Jesus assures us, “…knows what you need before you ask him,” (Matthew 6:8). For, He continues later, “if you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him,” (Matthew 7:11)?
When we pray, let us trust that the same God who heard the plea of the leper in our Gospel today is the same God who hears our every prayer, great or small.