Reflection - Kneeling Before the Lord - Mark 1:40-45

Kneeling Before the Lord – Mark 1:40-45

How often do we really “kneel” before the Lord? Do we go to him with the same faith that we find in today’s Gospel from Matthew? Here we have a leper who seeks out to locate Jesus, why? Because, he has heard about this Man and the power that he has to transform people. So, he leaves the confines of were lepers would live, the outlining areas away from towns, and tries to encounter Jesus. When he does at last find Jesus, he kneels down, and with great faith, asks the Lord to be made clean.

Jesus sees the man’s faith and acts upon his request; the man is then made clean. With the great result that he can now rejoin the daily life of society, not as an outcast, but as a person in communion with other people. He is then able to spread the “news” about Jesus, letting people know what he has done for him. We have to ask, is the man disobedient to Jesus? Our Lord told the leper to say nothing but only show himself to the priest, but I think Jesus knew full well what the man was going to do. He did the same thing that people from that day to this day do, they tell the “good news” about their encounter with the Living God. This kind of event cannot be hidden, human nature makes us want to shout it from the roof tops. Was he wrong to do this? I am not sure, but the result was more people coming to the healing power of God given through Jesus Christ.

We can all see from the Gospel how this man’s “kneeling” turned out. He becomes a new person and a witness for Jesus, to all those he saw. How about our own “kneeling”? Do we do it with the same faith that the leper showed to Jesus, or do we do act through habit or a sense of obligation? Thinking all the while, let me just get these prayers said so I can move on. Many people approach their prayer life with God like this, we must not. We are called to go before the Lord daily, seeking him with the confidence knowing that he has the power to do what we are asking for, just as the leper did. Then we must allow Jesus to act through us, which is the ultimate reason for our healing and restoration, of our being made well. We may not always like the result of faithfully kneeling before God, but it is the first step of us doing God’s will and not our own.