Bishop leads Lenten mission

MENDHAM  It took considerable courage — and some faith — for the leper in Galilee in Mark’s Gospel to approach Jesus, kneel before him and then make a monumental request: “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” During a Lenten retreat in St. Joseph Church here, Bishop Serratelli told congregants that the leper’s move proved daring in ancient Israel, which isolated lepers from a society — treating them as “unclean,” forcing them to live in separate colonies and barring them from entering temples, walled cities and even the holy city of Jerusalem.

On March 26 — final night of a three-night retreat — the faithful in attendance listened as Bishop Serratelli reflect on Mark 1:40-45: the account of Jesus miraculously healing the leper, initially motivated by his compassion for the suffering of all people. He reaches out his hand, touches the man and replies to him, “I am willing. Be clean!” At that moment, the leper is cleansed of the horrible and hated disease. The Bishop said Mark uses the disease of leprosy to dramatize the effect of sin in our lives — cutting us off from God others — but also emphasizes the “unquenchable desire” of Jesus to heal us “mind and body” but most importantly of spirit — to forgive us of our sins.

For us to receive the healing of Christ, we need to recognize that we are sinners and then ask him for forgiveness, said the Bishop at his well-attended March 24-26 mission at St. Joseph’s, guided by his theme, “Centering Your Life on Jesus.”

“The man’s wretched condition impels him to voice his passionate plea. His position at Jesus’ feet and his prayer curiously combines belief and unbelief. He hears about Jesus and truly believes that he could cure him — faith comes from hearing. So with the little faith he has, he comes to Jesus, although his little faith is somewhat uncertain. He knows that Jesus can cure him but he is not so sure Jesus wills to cure him. The leper’s faith is small but it is more than enough,” Bishop Serratelli said. By approaching Jesus, the leper, he said, shows great courage in breaking through the social conventions and laws of ancient Israel that mandated that lepers follow: to stand at least six feet away from people and announce that they are “unclean, unclean, unclean” — for a disease which the Jews believed to be outward signs of the lepers’ sins. [The Gospel writers] remind us that the compassion of Jesus is the mercy of God made real in the Messiah. It leads him to reach out his hand to the outcast, the beggar, the blind, deaf, lepers and the dead,” he said.

Bishop Serratelli delivered his spiritual reflections from the ambo on the altar. He talked about “Jesus, the Foundation of Our Life” on March 24, “An Other Directed Life” on March 25 and “Sinners and the Mercy of God” on March 26. Each evening concluded with Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament led by the Bishop, assisted by Father Andrew Burns, St. Joseph’s parochial vicar. Providing the music were Mary Pat Davies, the parish music director, and a cantor. After the Bishop’s final reflection of the retreat, parishioners got an opportunity to meet with him, during a light reception in the gym of the adjoining St. Joseph School. The parish’s Spiritual Life Committee sponsored the event.

“This beautiful portrait [of Jesus healing the leper] tells us something about how he looks at each one of us — our weariness in life at times, our suffering and our sicknesses — which instinctively touch the heart of Jesus. That means that his desire to heal and his will to forgive wells up from his heart. Jesus is restless. His desire is unquenchable until he cleanses each one of us and makes us whole. This picture of the compassion of Jesus is a bright revelation of God, who is never indifferent to the suffering that we endure,” Bishop Serratelli said.

So what must we do for Christ to heal us? “We must come to Jesus and ask — as simple as that,” the Bishop said.

“We must realize that we are not well. By our sins, we are lame and left paralyzed in our will to follow the Lord. It’s no use simply to hear that Jesus heals; we need to ask for that healing for ourselves. We need not ever come to Jesus with a faltering faith and we never have to fear forming our prayer without the confidence that he will hear us,” Bishop Serratelli said. “Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, is constantly praying that we be cleansed of our sins and to each of us, he says, ‘You will be cleansed. You will be healed.’ Trust him wholly with your life problems, your suffering, your weakness and your sins. If you do, you will hear him say, ‘You have been made whole,’ ” the Bishop said.

After the final reflection of the retreat on March 26, Msgr. Joseph Anginoli, St. Joseph’s pastor and adjutant judicial vicar of the diocesan Tribunal, publicly thanked Bishop Serratelli, adding that “with his vast knowledge of Scripture, he was able to share the Word with us.”

“We heard it and hopefully our faith is stronger, as we continue our Lenten journey and look forward to celebrating Easter,” the pastor said.

Earlier during Lent, Bishop Serratelli — a Scripture scholar and former seminary professor — offered an Evening Reflection on March 12 at St. Therese Parish, Succasunna, and a Priests’ Day of Reflection on March 14 at St. Paul Inside the Walls: the Diocesan Center for Evangelization at Bayley-Ellard, Madison.

During the reception at St. Joseph’s afterwards, parishioner Dennis Howard remarked on Bishop Serratelli’s “amazing ability to bring Scripture alive with all the nuances of biblical times. It is almost like being there.”

“And yet his message is very contemporary. Without faith there is no healing. The challenge for Christians is communicating this through all the noise and clamor of contemporary society, but to begin, we have to start listening ourselves,” said Howard. “Where there is faith, there is hope. Bishop Serratelli’s call for repentance and forgiveness, compassion and love is a healing message for our times,” he said.