Tell No One Anything!

Thursday, Jan 16, 2025

Heb 3:7-14; Mk 1:40-45

Today’s Gospel highlights the goodness of the leper healed by Jesus. 

One of the distinctive features of Mark’s Gospel is the Messianic Secret. 

It is characteristic of Markan Jesus to purposefully hide his identity as the Messiah during his lifetime. 

Today’s Gospel is an example of it. 

However, we find the leper disobeying Jesus’ words so that he proclaims his name everywhere, despite Jesus strictly ordering him not to make his name known. 

Through its compelling narrative, today’s Gospel invites us to study the leper’s disobedience.

Why did the leper disobey Jesus? What was running on his mind? What did he want to achieve?

For me, the leper comes across as a just man who probably asked himself, ‘Why would Jesus ask me not to reveal his name? Does Jesus’ goodness not deserve revelation? How can I do justice to the healing I have received from Jesus?’ 

Having probably raised these questions within him, the leper wants not only to popularize his cure but also the one who cures him. 

The leper’s act of disobedience reveals that he does not believe in containing the joy within himself. Rather, he seems to believe that everything good must be proclaimed. Hence, he wants to make the Good Lord known and loved. 

If we are to use the words of Jesus himself, the leper saw that Jesus the light ‘should not be hidden under the bushel basket but must be put on the lampstand to give light to all’ (Mt 5:15). He seems to have literally understood the words of Jesus: ‘What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the rooftops’ (Mt 10:27). 

Hence, what we really see in the leper’s disobedience is his goodwill that wants to give ceaseless praise to the name of Jesus, who healed him. 

It is the leper’s goodwill that produces the opposite effect of what Jesus intends as the ‘Messianic Secret.’

Let us pray that we may possess the goodwill of the leper to proclaim the name of Jesus.

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar