Fr Peter Wood reads from the Gospel of Matthew (8: 1-4) in which we hear of the miracle of Jesus curing and transforming the life of the leper who felt unworthy of love.

In this beautiful story between Jesus and the leper, Fr Peter says, we hear how such an encounter shows how God interacts with us. In this case, we hear of the leper who is desperate for healing and was seeking the love of God in their life.  Fr Peter reflects that there are moments in our life when we, too, seek such experiences; it may not be miracles but a healing that can truly make us come to realise God’s presence in our life.

At other times, we may experience desolation where we feel God is not part of our life and, yet, we hear this story of how Jesus comes to this leper. When we think of miracles in the scriptures, it is hard to comprehend that certain individuals are given something they can’t even describe themselves.  The thing that we can come to know from this story, as beautiful as the miracle was between Jesus and the leper, is the importance of faith in our lives.

Fr Peter says that whatever we are going through, whatever desolation we may be experiencing, he hopes and prays that this story today will help us realise that God can truly encounter us in our moments of darkness. God can reach out his hand to us, so we know the hope we are searching is there in the love of God.  Fr Peter invites us to reach out as the leper did, unworthy as we are, to ask God to heal us and to forgive us for the times when we have turned our back on him. When we fall God can pick us up.