Those people
Imagine you’re the leper in today’s Gospel.
You know the consequences of leprosy. It’s a slow, horrible death sentence. With no cure.
Because it’s so contagious, society demands that you separate yourself from everyone else. So you don’t spread it. With other lepers as your only company. It seems like an easy road to despair. Or worse.
Which means there’s a strong temptation to cover up the signs of leprosy. To ignore the danger. So you can be with other people. Friends and family. Try to have a normal life. Even though it means risking their lives.
It’s an “either/or” trap. It traps us into thinking that if we don’t do one thing, then we have to do the other.
Which makes the actions of the leper so remarkable.
The leper ignores both options of the “either/or” that he’s stuck in. And chooses a third way. The best possible third way. Going to God.
If this dynamic – of an “either/or” trap that pushes us into thinking that if we don’t do one thing, then we have to do the other – seems familiar to us? It should.
Social media provides us with some of the most obvious examples, but our lives are loaded with it.
Why? Because it’s one of the Enemy’s most over-used sucker plays.
And we fall for it. All. The Time. C.S. Lewis explains,
“The devil always sends errors into the world in pairs – pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worst.
You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one.
But do not let us be fooled.
We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.”
Something to keep in mind. Whenever we’re loading up to go off on “those people.”
Today's Readings















