Lent is almost upon us once again. Next Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, when we receive ashes on our foreheads as a sign to God that we wish to regard our past sins as “dust and ashes” and rise, “like Phoenix from the ashes” from the death of sin into new life in Christ.
It means recognizing that sin, like the disease of leprosy, which corrupts the body and causes us to become “unclean” and separated from community, has corrupted our souls and caused us to become unclean in the sight of God, and separated from the community of the Holy Trinity.
The only one remedy is to turn, like the leper in our gospel story, to Jesus for healing from the leprosy of our sin, and, like the Psalmist in today’s Responsorial Psalm, to no longer “hide my Iniquity” but to “acknowledge my sin” to the Lord.
There will be ample opportunity during the Lenten season to celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation. Let us turn to the Lord at this time and say, with the leper in the gospel, “if you choose, you can make me clean” and hear him say to us “I do choose. Be made clean.”