O God, who teach us that you abide
in hearts that are just and true,
grant that we may be so fashioned by your grace
as to become a dwelling pleasing to you.
– Collect for 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time
As we join our prayers together as a universal Church today, let us reflect on what it really means to present our hearts as fitting dwelling places for the Lord. The prayer does not presume that our hearts are already perfect, but that if we are indeed open to the working of the Lord in our hearts, then our hearts should be just and true. A just heart desires to give to others what they are due. A true heart seeks to be honest and sincere.
Leviticus’ prescription of the ostracizing of the leper is jarring, and yet provides a powerful image for a true heart. (Lv 13:1-2, 44-46) Ancient men, like modern men, did not have a natural inclination to make their illnesses known. Today we guard our medical secrets very carefully, and sometimes so carefully that we do not even acknowledge to ourselves that we are sick or ill. As a teacher, I become frustrated when a student shows up in the height of flu season coughing, sneezing and feverish, all the while repeating his mantra, “I’m fine! I’m fine!” Unsurprisingly, he and the other students sitting within his sneeze radius spend the next few days at home in bed recovering from being “fine”. You and I may balk at Leviticus’ commands to quarantine oneself in time of illness, and on top of that to tear clothes, muffle beards and shout ‘Unclean! Unclean!’, but that ancient honesty beats modern denial any day of the week.
If in the midst of a 103 degree temperature and inability to stop sneezing we insist that we are in perfect health, is it any wonder that we do not want to admit our avarice, lust, pride, sloth etc. to ourselves, let alone to the spiritual descendants of Aaron? Yet, we also yearn to be a dwelling pleasing to the Lord! Truth is what we need, yet we think it unbearable. ‘Don’t go to the doctor; he’ll just tell you you are sick!’ If the doctor merely gives diagnosis, but no treatment, how are we better off than when we were in denial? The good news is, the truth about our need is fully understood in the context of a greater truth. The leper of the Gospel not only lived crying, ‘unclean! unclean!’ but cried out to Jesus, “If you wish, you can make me clean!” (Mk 1:40) Brothers and sisters, as we look towards the beginning of Lent, let us not hide our wounds from ourselves, but in open and honest acknowledgment, show our hearts to the Lord who wishes to heal us and to make His dwelling within us.