Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B) - For the Ride Home

•He shall dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp. (Leviticus 13:46b)
•Blessed the man to whom the LORD imputes not guilt, in whose spirit there is no guile. (Psalm 32:2)
•Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. (1 Corinthians 11:1)
•A leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” (Mark 1:40)

•Is it necessary or required for any follower of Jesus to make “his abode outside the camp”?
•Who is completely free from guile (duplicity)?
•How is the leper transformed? How did he know that Jesus could make him clean?

Again, that expression, le point vierge, (I cannot translate it) comes in here. At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is so to speak his name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.…I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.¹

¹Merton, Thomas, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Image Books: New York, 1966, p. 158.