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Year B
Discover the deeper meaning and connections found in this week's readings, through these great commentaries written by our priests.
Explore this week's readings and hear what God is saying to us through His Word.
Find out more about how we can mark this special day in our liturgy.
See our music recommendations for the liturgy.
Leviticus 13: 1-2. 44-46
First Corinthians 10:31-11:1
Mark 1:40-45
The OT teaching understood personal and collective sin as ‘separation,’ a discernible gap created by a turning away from God, that resulted in alienation.
The ritual separation and alienation described in the book of Leviticus was a way of off-setting the spread of a contagious disease, and in doing so accentuated alienation and separation - a significant loss of identity for the sufferer, which also may have been implicitly understood as a consequence of personal sin?
Mark’s story in today’s gospel describes the predicament of a leper, (one who has been cast out), who approaches Jesus and asks for healing, a desperate attempt to have his original identity and physical wholeness restored - this is a cry for his separation and alienation to be removed, as well as an implicit plea for his original identity to be given back - his desperate appeal, ‘you can cure me if you want to’ meets with Jesus’ response ‘of course I want to, be cured.’
The admonition not to go and immediately announce his cure is perhaps a call for a reflective moment of time in which the man can internalise the gift he has received - a movement from powerlessness to restoration, a gift from a power that was greater than himself.
Not surprisingly, the man in a state of jubilation and freedom proclaims everywhere, and those who are sick gravitate to Jesus to experience his compassion - the result? Jesus is inundated.
6th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Catholicism of the Catholic Church References:
CCC 1474: living in Christ unites all believers in him
CCC 1939-1942: human solidarity
CCC 2288-2291: respect for health
Although this is a Sunday in Ordinary time, this ear it is the Sunday that falls immediately before the beginning of Lent. Ash Wednesday is on the 14th. In the pre-1969 calendar, today would have been ‘Quinquagesima’ Sunday.
In the old Roman Rite, the three Sundays before Ash Wednesday, known as ‘Septuagesima,’ ‘Sexagesima’ and ‘Quinquagesima’ (Sundays falling roughly seventy, sixty and fifty days before Easter respectively) had a penitential character. The value of this was to prevent Lent starting without warning. These three Sundays functioned as a sort of ‘get ready! The great Fast is coming!’ reminder.
Maybe it would be worth remembering this on this Sunday at least.
The Collect, in fact, would serve well as a Lenten prayer, asking that God fashion us to ‘become a dwelling pleasing to you.’ The Responsorial Psalm (Psalm 31) is one of the seven penitential psalms.
The Prayer over the Offerings asks for ‘cleansing and renewal,’ both Lenten themes, while the Prayer after Communion finds an echo in the Prayer after Communion for the first Sunday of Lent in its words ‘that food by which we truly live.’
A good choice of Preface for this Sunday might be that for Sundays in Ordinary Time 3, with its emphasis on the Lord’s divine humanity being the healing remedy for the Fall, as St. John Henry Newman put it in his ‘The Dream of Gerontius: ’O wisest love, that flesh and blood Which did in Adam fail, Should strive afresh against the foe, Should strive and should prevail.’
These hymns have been picked and chosen from different sources.
Bread for the world, a world of hunger (CFE92 L625)
Praise my soul the King of heaven (CFE602, L807, LHON576, TCH258)
Lay your hands (CFE347, L432, LHON413)
We cannot measure (CFE772, L433, LHON713)
Key
CFE - Celebration Hymnal for Everyone
L – Laudate
LHON – Liturgical Hymns Old and New (Mayhew, 1999)
TCH – The Catholic Hymnbook (Gracewing)
Do you have questions about the liturgy and how we are called to participate in it? Explore how the Church councils, saints, and popes have answered this key question and many more.
Every movement of the Mass is rich in meaning but we can become over-familiar with it. Rediscover the Mass and explore how it relates to the Exodus story, where many of its rituals come from, and how it makes Jesus present to us today.
