6th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2021

Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
February 14, 2021

My brothers and sisters in Christ,¹

In our Gospel passage this morning, St. Mark tells us the story of the man with leprosy who comes to Jesus for healing. 

It is beautiful to see the compassion that our Lord has for this man. As we know, in the time of Jesus, people with leprosy were considered “unclean” and they were kept in isolation, because their disease was so contagious. 

That is what we heard in our first reading today, from the Book of Leviticus.

Of course now, because of the coronavirus pandemic, we can think of all those who have been isolated from their families and friends and from society. Also it is becoming more especially clear that many people are suffering from this isolation, especially I would say the elderly and the young people. So, let’s pray for relief for them for the healing that Jesus brings us.  

Our Gospel today is, as I said, a beautiful example of our Lord’s compassion and the miracles that he performed to change people’s lives. 

We reflect briefly on the passage of the Gospel where you see the man approaching Jesus who is so humble. He knows that he needs Jesus, that only Jesus can heal him. 

So he comes up to Jesus and he kneels down and asks him in a humble, simple way: “If you wish, you can make me clean.”

And as we heard, Jesus is “moved with pity” and so he responds to the leper by stretching out his hand and touching him. And then he speaks these powerful words of mercy to him: “I do will it. Be made clean.” 

I think, my brothers and sisters, this is a special passage of the Gospel to hear in this challenging time that we are living. And also, as we know, this coming Wednesday we start the season of Lent — this coming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday. 

And I was thinking how the season of Lent is always about coming back to God, it is about trusting in his mercy and forgiveness. 

As we heard in our responsorial psalm today: 

I turn to you, Lord, in time of trouble, and you fill me with the joy of salvation.
Then I acknowledged my sin to you,
my guilt I covered not.
I said, “I confess my faults to the Lord 
and you took away the guilt of my sin. 

This is, my brothers and sisters, the promise of Lent! This is the promise of our Christian lives. Jesus longs to heal us — just as he wanted to heal the sick man in today’s Gospel. This is why he came into the world, to bring us God’s mercy, to bring us God’s love. 

So we need to trust Jesus. We need to trust that he loves us, that he wants to make us clean — to forgive our sins, to reconcile us with God our Father. 

“Trust in Jesus.” I have been thinking after all that has happened this last year with the pandemic, with the unrest in our country, we need to renew our trust in the Lord. 

So during this coming Lenten season, we are making available prayers and daily reflections in our social media and our website: LACatholics.org

Because I think there is something that is so important for all of us at this time. Trust in Jesus. No matter what is going on in our lives or in the world, Jesus is there. He is with us. We can trust Jesus and trust in his mercy. 

But then, my dear brothers and sisters, we must bear witness to Jesus’ mercy in our lives. 

When we go back to the passage of the Gospel, we see how the man with leprosy in today’s Gospel wants to tell everyone the good news about what Jesus has done in his life. 

We need to be the same way. We need to be messengers of God’s mercy. We need to talk to others about Jesus and his love. And we need to model that mercy in our own lives. 

Yes, we need to show more mercy, more forgiveness, more understanding. 

St. Paul says today in the second reading: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” This is what it means to be a Christian, a Catholic. It means, as we know, to imitate Christ. We take Jesus as the model for our lives. 

And that means that the mercy that Jesus shows to us, we need to show to others. 

So we especially need to be good examples in our families, in our communities, in our society. 

One of our local saints, Blessed Mother Luisita, founder of the Carmelites of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Los Angeles, in her letters she was always telling the sisters “Trust in God alone. Don’t worry about anything, we are in the hands of God.”

What a beautiful message for all of us as we reflect on today’s Sacred Scriptures and we prepare for the season of Lent. 

So let us ask for the grace to renew our trust in God and that this coming Lenten season will be a time to strengthen our confidence in God’s personal love for each one of us. 

Trust in God alone. We are in the hands of God. 

And let’s ask our Blessed Mother Mary, the Mother of Mercy, to help us to turn to Jesus with the same humble trust of the man in today’s Gospel. 

And may she help us to bear witness to our Lord’s mercy, as she did. By the way we live, by the way we treat other people, and by the way we trust in his promises.

1. Readings: Lev. 13:1-2, 44-46; Ps. 32:1-2, 5, 11; 1 Cor. 10:13-11:1; Mark. 1:40-45.