Lepers were social outcasts forced to live outside the villages and towns. Jesus heals the leper, allowing him to return to communal living, but, in touching him, Jesus put himself on the outer. The Gospel says that Jesus ‘had to stay outside where nobody lived’. Jesus willingly changed places with the leper!

This incident prefigures the deepest mystery and scandal of the Gospel. Because of our deliberate wrongdoing, we are ‘on the outside’ with God. Our Lord and Saviour willingly experienced that alienation on Calvary, outside the walls of Jerusalem, in a desolate place where no-body lived. He suffered the dis-locating consequences of sin in his body and mind: ‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’

He took our place outside the human awareness of the loving presence of His Heavenly Father so that we might be located in the right place, insiders with God.

We might pause for a moment to lovingly thank our Saviour for leading us into ‘the One in Whom we live and move and have our being’.