I am that Leper

In Louis de Wohl’s novel about Saint Francis Xavier’s life, de Wohl portrays Xavier’s apostolic zeal in evangelizing the people. There is one scene where he describes another priest, Father Campo, who wasn’t sure about Father Francis Xavier’s work. He wanted to know more about this priest who was their Apostolic Nuncio but couldn’t decide if he actually wanted to meet him or not. Not knowing what to do, Father Campo decides to follow Father Xavier. Through the burning hot sun, Father Campo shadows Father Xavier, until to the great surprise of Father Campo they arrive at a leper colony. Father Xavier went to celebrate Mass for the lepers. Lepers who had hands swollen up to double their size, faces with gaping holes in them where nose or mouth should have been, shoulders and breasts covered with large ulcers. Mass began. A little boy with bandaged hands served as an acolyte. Father Campo crossed himself and prayed and as he prayed, he had the strangest thoughts. The whole world was leprous, and the worst lepers were those who did not even know that they were ill. For with many of them the disease did not show on the outside, not on the skin, nor did it mutilate their fingers and toes, but inside they were worse to look at than even that old man whose face was one whitish mass of swellings and who was crouching on the ground, because he no longer had any legs, except for bandaged stumps. Father Campo, for instance, was leprous inside. He was covered with ulcers of indifference and sloth and lack of charity, with the sores of self-righteoussness and lukewarmness in the service of his Lord.

Father Campo assisted Father Xavier as he gave Holy Communion to the people. Faces from a hundred nightmares, mouths without lips, supporating sores and stinking ulcers, eyes whose lids were almost eaten away, ulcers on the very tongues on which Father Francis put the blessed Host. Mass ended. After talking to the lepers, the two priests left. They did not talk. They did not say a single word. Suddenly Father Campo stopped and Father Francis stopped with him and turned towards him. “There is just one thing I want to say,” said Father Campo. “I want to say that only now I know what the Incarnation of Our Blessed Lord means.”

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (Jn 1:14)

As religious sisters of the Religious Family of the Incarnate Word, we are often meditating on and studying about the Incarnate Word, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Still, even if we were to spend every waking moment, of every day, for our entire lives studying and meditating on this one mystery, we would not and could not exhaust its splendor. Our God became man for us, in order to redeem us, simply because His love for us is so great. We who are the worst and most repulsive of lepers, we who are His enemies because of our sin, we who time and time again refuse to love and trust the One who created and redeemed us by giving us His own life, we who crucified Him, He justified by His blood (Romans 5:9). For where sin increased, grace abounded all the more (Romans 5:20). He created us in His image and when we tainted that image by sin, even then He refused to let us go. By our own choice we made ourselves ugly and the most repulsive of creatures; and while we were still hideous to behold because of our sin, He looked at us and loved us, and gave His life, sparing no suffering, to redeem us.

In order to begin to understand the Incarnation of the Word of God, we must grow in self-knowledge. We must learn what it means that we were created in the image and likeness of God, and what we have done to that image through sin. If we don’t see ourselves as those lepers, we don’t understand the love of our Jesus.