Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
The psychoanalysis and the confession
A leper came to him (and kneeling down) begged him and said, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.” The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean. Then, warning him sternly, he dismissed him at once. Then he said to him, “See that you tell no one anything, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them.” The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter. He spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly. He remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere. Mk 1,40-45
This leper kneels before Jesus and he begs him: “If you wish, you can make me clean!”. Jesus had compassion on him, holds out his hand, touched him and said: “I do will it. Be made clean”. Because the leprosy symbolizes the sin in the Bible, this healing shows, like no other, the mission of Jesus of Nazareth on the earth: to forgive and to liberate the man from the sin and from all his feelings of being guilt which are the tragic consequence. This is what happens, even today, in the confessional, when a sinner comes to the priest and humbly asks for forgiveness from his sins. At that time Jesus forgives and heals him: his sins are erased, no longer exist. A person who has confessed to the priest, with faith and contrition, his sins of sex, exits spiritually and morally healed and in front of God also regains his chastity. Because the sin and guiltiness ravage our psyche, now people try often to keep them out, it may be by writing to the specialized columns of some weekly magazine from which they receive, in the best case, a good advice and nothing more. A growing number of people ends up to the psychoanalyst, who tries to solve the problem by removing the guiltiness feelings which are transferred to others, usually parents or parental figures.
Having closely lived the experience of people very dear to us, it seems that often, on this road, we go a little further: you end up by living on psyco medicines and to destroy the relationship with those people who have been identified as the cause of the discomfort.The sins and the guiltiness cannot be removed by medicines, neither by searching for those persons supposed to be responsible. It is better a good priest, who, for the gift of the sacramental grace which receives when he exercises his ministry in the name of Jesus, has the mandate to forgive and cancel the sins. It is enough to believe in it. Moreover – nicely our friend Silvia states – everyone is united to the Lord by a spiritual rope: every time we sin it is broken and when we confess, he forgives us and restores the rope by making a node on it. Thus, node after node, we move closer to the Lord because the rope becomes every time shorter!