'Everything he did enriched the spiritual lives of the people who were in contact with him.' Sunday Reflections, 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

 

Christ Pantocrator (Christ in Majesty)

Monreale Cathedral, Palermo, Sicily [Web Gallery of Art]

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel Mark 1:40-45 (English Standard Version Anglicised: India)

A leper came to Jesus, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. 

And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once, and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them.” But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter.

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

Dr Carlo Urbani

(1956 - 2004) [Wikipedia]

I have used this material before. The story of Dr Carlo Urbani is one that gives me hope during the current pandemic. It is a story of a person inspired by his Christian faith to serve the poor as a doctor with the full support of his wife Giuliana. And in serving the sick he gave up his life. Covid-19 is closely related to SARS, the disease that he discovered and from which he died.

Towards the end of February 2003 Dr Carlo Urbani, an Italian, went to Vietnam, representing the World Health Organisation, to investigate an American businessman who was showing unusual symptoms. It turned out to be severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a highly contagious virus. The man who discovered this new disease died from it himself about a month later on 29 March. In a conscious moment, while in the ICU in a hospital in Bangkok, he asked for a priest to give him the Last Rites.

Vladimir Redzioch of Inside the Vatican interviewed Giuliana Chiorrini, the widow of Dr Urbani. MISYON, the Columban magazine in the Philippines, published the interview, with permission, in its March-April 2004 issue. Here are extracts from it.

ITV: Your husband chose to work with the sick and poor around the world. Why?

Giuliana Chiorrini: Carlo was always involved in volunteer work and since his youth was attracted by the poor. He cultivated the desire to discover new horizons. To do this he left for Africa with the missionaries. Since his days as a young student with a backpack full of medicines, he had traveled in Africa (Mali, Niger, and Benin). Afterwards he work in solidarity camps run by the Xaverian Fathers, Catholic Action and Open Hands. He was always in contact with missionaries. As a doctor he wrote for the missionary magazine Missioni Consolata. Carlo also fulfilled his desire to help he poor during his 10 years working at the hospital in Macerata. This confirmed him in his work with Médecins Sans Frontières, of which he was the president, and in this capacity he received the Nobel Peace Prize when it was conferred on the organization in 1999. 

ITV: What role did his faith play in his choice of life?

Chiorrini: Faith had an extremely important role in my husband’s life. Everything he did enriched the spiritual lives of the people who were in contact with him. He was also very sensitive to the beauty of creation - he even used to go hang-gliding to admire nature.

Dr Carlo Urbani with his wife, Giuliana, and their children, Maddalena, Luca and Tommaso [Source]

That year St John Paul II invited the family of Dr Urbani to carry the Cross during the Via Crucis on Good Friday, 18 April, in the Colosseum.

ITV: This year, during the Via Crucis at the Colosseum, you and your son carried the cross. How did you react when you heard you had been chosen by the Holy Father, and what significance did it have for your family to participate in this Good Friday liturgy?

Chiorrini: I am a believer, as was my husband, and knowing I was to carry the cross during the Via Crucis touched me a great deal, as well as giving me an enormous joy. It was a very intense moment of the interior spirituality and in all honesty it was also very moving, with the evocative atmosphere which was created that evening.

Giuliana Chiorrini, Dr Urbani's widow, carries the cross during the Via Crucis at the Colosseum, Good Friday 2003

If you will, you can make me clean. Like Jesus, Dr Carlo Urbani chose and made many clean, sacrificing his own life in doing so.

The video is based on a letter that Dr Carlo Urbani wrote in May 2002. It is in Italian and contains many photos of his family and in his work situation. He writes very warmly about his family and thanks God for the generosity he has experienced from so many.

There is a longer video, with English subtitles, about the life of Carlo Urbani here. It is just over 16 minutes in length and I would encourage you to view it.

Healing Scenes from the Life of Jesus

Codex Aureus of Echternach [Web Gallery of Art]

A Brief Reflection

The last two verses of the First Reading (Leviticus 13:45-46) could well describe the situation of so many today: The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.

So many persons very sick with Covid-19 cannot be visited by their own family. A friend of mine whose brother-in-law was very sick with the illness spent two hours in very cold weather, along with family members, outside the window of the room of the sick person, who has since died. So many die isolated from their family with the medical staff attending them dressed like astronauts, something that is extremely uncomfortable for them and not only physically. The PPE they are required to wear in a sense hides their humanity. And, very distressingly, many cannot attend the funerals of persons who were close to them.

And all of us are required now in many situations not only to cover our upper lip but our whole mouth and our nose with our masks.

I have a priest-friend who has been isolated in his room for more than three weeks in the nursing home in Dublin where he now lives  because of an outbreak of Covid-19. Ten priests there died in January, all over 80 and eight of them positive for the virus. My friend is managing well. He spent many years working overseas and is used to being on his own. And he is grateful for the care of the Sisters and staff.

But many do not have such care. Families are not able to come together except through phone calls or Zoom meetings. These are helpful but are not the 'real thing'.

A friend who is a parish priest told me the other day of a six-year-old boy in his parish who told his parents that he wished he had never been born. He is feeling the isolation from his friends and is too young to understand it.

Jesus in healing the leper in today's gospel brought him back into society. The way society in his time dealt with leprosy and those who had it is not really all that different from how we are dealing with the current pandemic, though we have much greater medical knowledge now.

We are not totally helpless but we can pray to Jesus on behalf of all with the words of the leper: If you will, you can make us clean. He is already responding through the countless front-line workers taking care of the needs of those seriously ill with Covid-19. Some of theses workers, like Dr Carlo Urbani, have given their lives so that others might live.

Extraordinary Form of the Mass

Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) 

Quinquagesima Sunday 

The complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 2-14-2021 if necessary).

Epistle: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13.  Gospel: Luke 18:31-43.

Authentic Beauty

Authentic beauty, however, unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to know, to love, to go towards the Other, to reach for the Beyond.

Pope Benedict XVI meeting with artists in the Sistine Chapel, 21 November 2009.

My Thanks to You

Sung by Steve Conway

Music: Noel Gay / Lyrics: Norman Newell

Orchestra of Roberto Inglez

I have posted a number of times about St Valentine's Day, a feast day that is observed in the calendar of the Traditional Latin Mass, though not this year, as it falls on Sunday. In an audience with newly-married couples Pope Francis reminded them of the importance of three expressions: May I?, Thank you and I'm sorry. He told them: The second word: be appreciative. How many times the husband needs to say to his wife, ‘Thank you’. And how many times the wife must say to her husband, ‘Thank you’. Thank each other, because the sacrament of marriage is conferred by the two spouses, one to the other. This sacramental relationship is maintained with gratitude.

The song above is just that: My Thanks to You, a husband singing to his wife. The singer, Steve Conway, was a husband and the father of a young daughter when he died after heart surgery in 1952 at the age of 31. As a child I loved his voice, which I would now describe as beautiful.

This weekend we are holding the first online Marriage Encounter in Ireland, led by three couples ans myself. I would appreciate your prayers very much.

Originally posted on Bangor to Bobbio.