Leprosy – a sin.
We live for eternal life.

Some informative statistics. In Latin America, it was 1970 registered 7,500 lepers.  In 1982, it was 279,000. There are 10 million lepers worldwide. Microbacterium leprae has adapted to the drugs used. About 130,000 people in Indonesia suffer from leprosy. The island country has the fourth-highest number of leprosy cases in the world, behind India (1.67 million), Brazil (283,000), and Bangladesh (136,000). Indonesia is among the countries with the largest population (195 million inhabitants).

Are you interested in these statistics? If I were you, I don’t know if I could repeat the numbers mentioned. Latin America and Indonesia are far away. Although as people and Christians, we are supposed to be in solidarity with the suffering. I often come across the content of the proverb: “A shirt is closer than a coat.” So our problems and difficulties affect us more. And what about leprosy? Is it enough to state that there are no lepers in Slovakia? leprosy, let’s remember that leprosy in the Gospel reminds us of sin. And sin does not touch us?

Jesus says to each of us: “I want to, be clean” (Mk 1:41)!

At the patient’s bedside, we often try to put ourselves in their situation. It is often difficult. Helping a sick person is a great effort for those around him who love him. The leper realized his situation. The Mosaic Law was uncompromising and yet necessary for society. The disease leprosy was contagious. We are not surprised that when he heard about Jesus performing miracles and signs, he begged him on his knees: “If you want, you can make me clean” (Mk 1:40). The life of the leper can be expressed by the words that he lived on the periphery, the edge of life social, family, religious… He was ostracized by society because of his illness. The Gospel does not say what was the cause of his illness. We know about the leper that he lived without hope of being cured. He lived in a state of waiting for someone to deliver him from this terrible condition, only death. And here comes Jesus. He hears about him as a miraculous healer. The leper suddenly has hope. Mark the evangelist wrote only one sentence about the sick person, with which he turns to Jesus. The sentence says it all. About the internal state of the patient and the external impact of the disease. However, he also talks about hope, but also about the humility with which the sick person turns to Jesus. The result of the sick man’s encounter with Jesus? Mark the evangelist notes: “Leprosy immediately left him, and he was clean” (Mk 1:42).

The disease of leprosy can be compared to the state of the soul after sin, with the fact that it is primarily the inside of a person, imperceptible to the human sense.