"If you wish, you can make me clean." ~Mark 1:40
However
great our sinfulness, each one of us can be healed by God every day. We have
only to worship him with humility and love, and wherever we are to say with
faith: “Lord, if you want to you can make me clean." It is by believing from the
heart that we are justified, so we must make our petitions with the utmost
confidence, and without the slightest doubt of God’s power.
If
we pray with a faith springing from love, God’s will need be in no doubt. He
will be ready and able to save us by an all-powerful command. He immediately
answered the leper’s request, saying: “I do want to.” Indeed, no sooner had the
leper begun to pray with faith than the Savior’s hand began to cure him of his
leprosy.
This
leper is an excellent teacher of the right way to make petitions. He did not
doubt the Lord’s willingness through disbelief in his compassion, but neither
did he take it for granted, for he knew the depths of his own sinfulness. Yet
because he acknowledged that the Lord was able to cleanse him if he wished, we
praise this declaration of firm faith just as we praise the Lord’s mighty
power.
For
obtaining a favor from God rightly depends as much on having a real living
faith as on the exercise of the Creator’s power and mercy. If faith is weak it
must be strengthened, for only then will it succeed in obtaining health of body
or soul.
The
Apostle’s words, “purifying their hearts by faith” referred, surely, to strong
faith like this. And so, if the hearts of believers are purified by faith, we
must give thought to this virtue of faith, for, as the Apostle says, “Anyone
who doubts is like a wave in the sea.”
A
faith shown to be living by its love, steadfast by its perseverance, patient by
its endurance of delay, humble by its confession, strong by its confidence,
reverent by its way of presenting petitions, and discerning with regard to
their content—such a faith may be certain that in every place it will hear the
Lord saying: “I do want to.”
Pondering
this wonderful reply, let us put the words together in their proper sequence.
The leper began: “Lord, if you want to,” and the Savior said: “I do want to.”
The leper continued: “You can make me clean,” and the Lord spoke his powerful
word of command: “Be clean.”
All
that the sinner’s true confession maintained with faith, love and power
immediately conferred. And in case the gravity of his sins should make anyone
despair, another Evangelist says this man who was cured had been completely
covered with leprosy.
~Paschasius Radbertus, c. 785-860
Heal me, Lord, that I may be healed;
save me, that I may be saved,
for it is You Whom I praise.
~Jeremiah 17:14
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