Pulse 94.1 Fm

The Word–Fr Tony Percy–Blood Healing (Fr Tony Percy says in this healing we really are brought into the mystery of Christ’s blood. Mark is trying to help us to see the tremendous connection between all of Christ's words and actions and the Pascal Mystery, that is, Christ suffering and death and resurrection and ascension. So, the healing of the lepper, to my mind, has three very important levels to this miracle. The first level is the leprosy in and of itself. It leads to a deep sense of isolation that the only way to contain the disease was to isolate people, the social dislocation and people feeling terribly cut off from community. On the second level Mark says Jesus could no longer go openly into any town but had to stay outside in places where nobody lived. This is in and through his own actions of healing leprosy, you can begin to get a sense of the foretaste of the exclusion of Christ and the rejection of Christ. The third level comes when the leper is told by Jesus to show himself to a priest and to o