Monday, March 24, 2025

Homily for Monday, 3d Week of Lent

Homily for Monday
3d Week of Lent

March 24, 2025
2 Kgs 5: 1-15
Luke 4: 24-30
Provincial House, New Rochelle

The Cleansing of Naaman

It must have been humbling for Naaman, a great general, to realize that he’d become a leper.  Humbling, too, to be given advice by a slave girl.  Humbling again to go to a foreign country, one he’d probably fought, to seek healing.  The final humiliation, as we heard, was to be told simply to bathe in the Jordan, without any elaborate ritual or special attention from the prophet.  But from Naaman’s humility came salvation.

In Nazareth the people couldn’t see how the young man they’d known for decades could be God’s voice for them.  They couldn’t see that God might act to save foreigners.  They weren’t humble enuf for that, and they missed out on the salvation that Jesus brings.

On the 24th of the month, we remember her who was the Lord’s humble handmaid, and thereby became the mother of our Salvation.

In lowliness, humility, and simplicity, God saves us.

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