# Reaching Out to the Lepers - Bishop Barron's Daily Sermons

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 14 Jul 2026, 14 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72754562/reaching_out_to_the_lepers_bishop_barron_s_sunday_sermon.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 2: Peace be with you, friends.
[0:01] Speaker 1: We continue reading from the marvelous Gospel of Mark. We're
[0:05] Speaker 1: still in chapter one as we make our way through it,
[0:08] Speaker 1: and this is that marvelous passage about Jesus curing a leper. Listen,
[0:13] Speaker 1: a leper came to Jesus and, kneeling down, begged him
[0:17] Speaker 1: and said.
[0:17] Speaker 2: If you wish you can make me clean, move with pity.
[0:21] Speaker 1: He stretched out his hand, touched him and said, I do,
[0:25] Speaker 1: will it be made clean. The leprosy left him immediately,
[0:29] Speaker 1: and he was made clean. Stayed so deeply in the
[0:33] Speaker 1: imaginations of the first Christians, these moments of healing. It's
[0:38] Speaker 1: one of the clearest things we know about Jesus is
[0:41] Speaker 1: that he engaged in this kind of work, and they're
[0:43] Speaker 1: so vividly remembered and so vividly told in the Gospels.
[0:49] Speaker 2: What do we make of.
[0:50] Speaker 1: This, well, kind of look at it from three angles now.
[0:54] Speaker 1: The first one is reaching out to the leper. I
[0:58] Speaker 1: mentioned last week how the Church as the mystical body
[1:01] Speaker 1: of Jesus is the continuation of Jesus' work and presence
[1:06] Speaker 1: down through the ages.
[1:07] Speaker 2: We do what he did.
[1:09] Speaker 1: So last week we heard about praying and about evangelizing,
[1:12] Speaker 1: and caring for the poor. That's what Jesus does. But
[1:14] Speaker 1: now in this specific case, he reaches out to a leper.
[1:18] Speaker 1: Now we know what that meant in the culture of
[1:21] Speaker 1: Jesus time. That meant someone who was in every sense
[1:25] Speaker 1: an outsider. You know, he was a dangerous figure. Is
[1:29] Speaker 1: this contagious figure excluded from the community, excluded from the
[1:34] Speaker 1: life of worship? We hear from the Book of Leviticus
[1:38] Speaker 1: that the leper had to keep his clothes rent as
[1:42] Speaker 1: a sign of mourning and had to call out unclean, unclean.
[1:46] Speaker 1: Can you imagine, I mean, how humiliated, how degradating it
[1:53] Speaker 1: must have been for the leper. So Jesus reaching out
[1:59] Speaker 1: to the leper, now, mind you, this would have made
[2:01] Speaker 1: him ritually unclean, I mean, susceptible to the disease, yeah,
[2:06] Speaker 1: but more to it, ritually unclean. That's how radical, how
[2:11] Speaker 1: extraordinary this outreach is. What does the church do up
[2:17] Speaker 1: and down the ages it reaches out? Now, you know,
[2:20] Speaker 1: we've largely dealt with our modern medicine with the problem
[2:24] Speaker 1: of leprosy, but as you've probably heard it a hundred
[2:27] Speaker 1: other homilies, there are lots of other forms of leprosy. Today,
[2:31] Speaker 1: People who for whatever reason, find themselves to use PAULP.
[2:35] Speaker 1: France's language on the margins of society not included suspect, dangerous,
[2:45] Speaker 1: best kept it.
[2:46] Speaker 2: Out of sight, out of mind.
[2:50] Speaker 1: The church's instinct must be following its master to reach out, look,
[2:56] Speaker 1: even when that reaching out is dangerous, even when that
[3:02] Speaker 1: reaching out might make us unclean.
[3:04] Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
[3:05] Speaker 1: In the cultural sense, there are certain groups of people.
[3:08] Speaker 1: If you reach out, you'll be seen by polite society
[3:12] Speaker 1: as kind of a suspect figure yourself. So a good
[3:17] Speaker 1: question this gospel raises, and again you probably heard this
[3:20] Speaker 1: one hundred times, but it's worth hearing again. Who are
[3:23] Speaker 1: the lepers in our society? Who are those now who
[3:27] Speaker 1: are compelled in different ways to say unclean? Unclean that
[3:32] Speaker 1: we would rather keep at bay. That are our dangerous,
[3:36] Speaker 1: contagious people. They're the ones that we should reach out to.
[3:43] Speaker 1: Especially when I was teaching at the seminary years ago,
[3:47] Speaker 1: I used to tell the students, when you get to
[3:49] Speaker 1: your first parish, one of your first questions should be
[3:53] Speaker 1: who are the poor here?
[3:55] Speaker 2: Now? Some of the fellows I taught did indeed go
[3:58] Speaker 2: into economically poor areas.
[4:01] Speaker 1: So someone in the inner cities of Chicago and so on,
[4:05] Speaker 1: but others in other parts of the country, they were
[4:07] Speaker 1: economically poor, easy enough to identify, but it's the subtler
[4:12] Speaker 1: forms of poverty.
[4:13] Speaker 2: I was kind of driving it.
[4:17] Speaker 1: Who are the people who are on the margins, who
[4:19] Speaker 1: feel excluded? Find them, find them, reach out to them,
[4:28] Speaker 1: even when it's dangerous to you, even when maybe it's
[4:32] Speaker 1: a threat to your reputation, even when you might get
[4:38] Speaker 1: the contagion yourself. No, No, they're the very people the
[4:43] Speaker 1: church should reach out to. So there's I think a
[4:46] Speaker 1: first great lesson. Again, I mentioned Paul Francis again and
[4:50] Speaker 1: again has been saying this to us.
[4:52] Speaker 2: I love the image you use. One time, speaking to priests, he.
[4:56] Speaker 1: Said, the oil of your ordination has to run down
[5:01] Speaker 1: your head and then onto your garments, into the very
[5:04] Speaker 1: edge of your garments, and then out into the world,
[5:08] Speaker 1: otherwise it becomes rancid. From the moment I read that image,
[5:13] Speaker 1: it stayed in my mind that as a priest, I've
[5:16] Speaker 1: been anointed for service, and that oil of anointing because
[5:22] Speaker 1: I'm meant to stay on me as a sign of
[5:24] Speaker 1: you my privilege, but it's meant to go through me
[5:28] Speaker 1: out into the world. Who are the lepers? Who are
[5:32] Speaker 1: the poor? Find them, reach out to them. Okay, here's
[5:38] Speaker 1: a second take on this thing. Feeling like a leper.
[5:46] Speaker 1: Sometimes we in our sin feel exactly like the leper
[5:53] Speaker 1: in Jesus' time.
[5:55] Speaker 2: Oh you know, the.
[5:56] Speaker 1: Things that I've done, They're so embarrassing to me. It's
[6:01] Speaker 1: such a source of shame. The addictions I have, or
[6:06] Speaker 1: the things that I've done, or the relationships I've had,
[6:12] Speaker 1: they keep me away from the Lord. It's as though
[6:17] Speaker 1: when the Lord comes close, there's some instinct in me,
[6:21] Speaker 1: as a sinner, that says, unclean, unclean, no, no, stay
[6:25] Speaker 1: away from me. I'll tell you this now, based on
[6:28] Speaker 1: thirty almost thirty eight years of hearing confessions, the very
[6:33] Speaker 1: saddest things out here. When someone says, uh, Father, look,
[6:39] Speaker 1: I'm not even going to bother, going to confession.
[6:43] Speaker 2: No.
[6:43] Speaker 1: No, the things I've done, there's no way the Lord
[6:47] Speaker 1: will forgive me. No. No, I'm too far gone. I'm
[6:53] Speaker 1: too far under, you know, I'm too far away. My
[6:59] Speaker 1: own sin, my own unworthiness, has turned me into a
[7:04] Speaker 1: kind of leper. The incomparable good news here, everybody is
[7:11] Speaker 1: just as Jesus long ago, violating all the social and
[7:15] Speaker 1: religious conventions of his own time reached out to those
[7:21] Speaker 1: who were compelled to say unclean, unclean. So now now
[7:27] Speaker 1: in the life of the church, he reaches out still
[7:30] Speaker 1: to us. So people listening to me right now, I know,
[7:36] Speaker 1: I know there are people right now hearing me who
[7:40] Speaker 1: feel exactly in that situation. No, no, I'm beyond the pale.
[7:46] Speaker 1: I'm beyond hope. No one's beyond hope. Why because we're
[7:52] Speaker 1: not relying on our accomplishments, not relying on my ability
[7:56] Speaker 1: to turn my life around. That's not what Christian is
[7:58] Speaker 1: about at all. It's about out opening oneself to the
[8:03] Speaker 1: mercy that's coming our way. That Jesus has a special
[8:09] Speaker 1: heart for those who have who feel like lepers.
[8:14] Speaker 2: Let him in.
[8:16] Speaker 1: And maybe there's someone again right now who's who's feeling
[8:19] Speaker 1: I'm at the bottom. Here, I'm at the bottom, there's
[8:23] Speaker 1: no hope for me. No, No, you're the one. You're
[8:27] Speaker 1: the one he's reaching out to right now.
[8:32] Speaker 2: Can we accept that in some ways everybody?
[8:35] Speaker 1: That's the greatest challenge in the spiritual life is is
[8:40] Speaker 1: can I open myself to grace? Remember that line from
[8:44] Speaker 1: the Lord when he says to the woman, do you
[8:47] Speaker 1: do you want to be healed?
[8:49] Speaker 2: And that's a curious question.
[8:51] Speaker 1: But boy, the more you deal with people in the
[8:54] Speaker 1: psychological order and the spiritual order, you realize that's not
[8:56] Speaker 1: a peculiar question at all.
[8:58] Speaker 2: That's the question in some ways, h do you want
[9:01] Speaker 2: to be healed? Open yourself.
[9:05] Speaker 1: I don't care how leprous you feel, how unworthy you feel.
[9:10] Speaker 1: Open yourself. He's reaching out to you. Now, Okay, here's
[9:14] Speaker 1: the third perspective on this. And then when I think
[9:17] Speaker 1: that we're most likely to miss but not, they wouldn't
[9:20] Speaker 1: have missed it in Jesus' own audience. So think of
[9:23] Speaker 1: the woman with the hemorrhage, think of the leper here,
[9:28] Speaker 1: think of the man who bent over. These were physical ailments,
[9:33] Speaker 1: to be sure, but in the religious context of the time,
[9:38] Speaker 1: they were also ailments that kept somebody from worship, that
[9:46] Speaker 1: rendered somebody unclean in some way. So they were excluded
[9:50] Speaker 1: not just from the you know, social company of the community.
[9:53] Speaker 1: They were excluded from the temple. They were excluded from
[9:58] Speaker 1: the worship of the church. And so in restoring these
[10:03] Speaker 1: people to physical health, Jesus is also restoring them to
[10:08] Speaker 1: spiritual health. You know, the case of the of the
[10:12] Speaker 1: man who's bent over is interesting because the attitude of
[10:16] Speaker 1: worship was standing up straight, and so it's as though
[10:21] Speaker 1: Israel had been bent over and now is being straightened
[10:24] Speaker 1: up to offer God righte praise. So here's my third
[10:28] Speaker 1: perspective on this story. Can we read the lever here
[10:34] Speaker 1: as someone who has become deformed through lack of worship?
[10:45] Speaker 1: What makes our lives properly ordered is the worship of God.
[10:52] Speaker 1: When we honor God, we worship God, then our lives
[10:55] Speaker 1: become rightly ordered. We become healthy spiritually. What may makes
[11:00] Speaker 1: us sick is precisely absence.
[11:04] Speaker 2: From right worship. I'm running off, Think of the prodigal son.
[11:11] Speaker 1: I'm running off seeking all kinds of created goods. I'm
[11:15] Speaker 1: worshiping at all kinds of false altars. Is Jesus now
[11:22] Speaker 1: in curing the leper bringing him back to right praise?
[11:27] Speaker 1: In fact, doesn't he say go tell the priests? In
[11:30] Speaker 1: other words, it's time to go back to the temple
[11:34] Speaker 1: now think of our time. Everybody in the West, anyway,
[11:38] Speaker 1: not true with Nigeria. Thank God, we're nice. Something that
[11:40] Speaker 1: ninety four percent of Catholics go to mass as a
[11:44] Speaker 1: healthy country spiritually, but in the West, people in droves
[11:50] Speaker 1: are staying away from mass, staying away from right worship,
[11:55] Speaker 1: staying away from the praise of God.
[11:57] Speaker 2: What happens They become lepers.
[12:00] Speaker 1: They become distorted, deformed, they become marginalized. Why their own
[12:07] Speaker 1: lack of worship. You know, we look at those statistics say, oh, well,
[12:12] Speaker 1: you know, so it goes. Well it's not so it goes.
[12:15] Speaker 1: That's very, very dangerous stuff. When now armies of especially
[12:21] Speaker 1: young people are staying away from church, and then we wonder,
[12:27] Speaker 1: I wonder why numbers of young people is spiking suicidal
[12:33] Speaker 1: tendencies and anxiety and depression.
[12:36] Speaker 2: There's no wonder.
[12:38] Speaker 1: It's lack of praise, lack of right worship that distorts us.
[12:44] Speaker 1: Bottom line, no matter how you read this story, at
[12:47] Speaker 1: the heart of it is Jesus who reaches out. You
[12:53] Speaker 1: feel like a leper. He's reaching out to you. You've
[12:57] Speaker 1: been away from church for too long. He's reaching out
[12:59] Speaker 1: to you. You want to know what to do in
[13:02] Speaker 1: your life as a Christian will imitate him reach out
[13:05] Speaker 1: to those on the margins. This story, this can simply
[13:09] Speaker 1: told but powerfully concentrated story tells.
[13:14] Speaker 2: Us what Jesus is all about.
[13:16] Speaker 1: Then and now, and God bless you.

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