To our civilised ears, todays readings sound very strange indeed. Their original context is so far removed from our world that their significance and their import will be very difficult to recover. We are looking back to the organisation and management of an introverted tribal society. Their world was a very confined one, they lived at very close quarters to each other. In such a society, the control of infectious diseases was a matter of life-and-death, literally. Just as in our own day, highly infectious diseases are addressed through isolation. In this way an epidemic is avoided. When we read that passage from old testament at first, the treatment of the leper may strike us as being cruel and humiliating: "He must wear his clothing torn, his hair disordered. He must cover his face, cry unclean, unclean and he must live outside the camp." But these were a nomadic people, a tribe on the move constantly. The principle informing that law is a humane one: The leper, no matter how serious a threat he is to the life and health of the community, is still part of that community. He must not be abandoned. He must live outside the pitched camp, but when the tribe moves on, he must travel with the tribe; While the tribe should take sensible precautions against the spread of this disease, the illness of the leper does not absolve the tribe of their responsibilities towards him.

Despite our presumed civilisation, similar fears gnaw at our sophisticated souls. Leprosy I suppose is a symbolic image for social and all exclusion. Every community finds itself under threat to one degree or another. Disease is only one form of perceived threat. AIDS I suppose would be the closest modern equivalent to ancient leprosy. As with ancient leprosy, a whole mythology and phobia builds up around AIDS. The fear and abhorrence of the illness itself is transferred to the unfortunate victim. The more senior among you will identify a similar reaction to TB victims in the forties and fifties. Of necessity, the unfortunate victims were cared for in isolation hospitals as they were called. In the absence of a cure, this was the only way in which the disease could be controlled. But the attitude of the general community was not always as rational as that. Somehow, the fear and abhorrence of the disease itself attached itself to the victim.

But this gospel finds application to all sorts of excluded people. The sick can feel very excluded. Hence the gospel injunction to visit the sick. In trying to grapple with bad news, the sick can find themselves in quarantine. Whereas we lived with assumptions before and daily certainties, now we have to live in fear. But the gospel addresses not just those who are excluded through illness. The deliberate exclusion of any groups of people is contrary to the gospel: refugees, unemployed, travellers, single mothers, homeless people. Ireland has had a very miserable track record in this regard. And it has to be said that the Church, far from operating as an agent of integration, functioned as an instrument of exclusion. All of the groups I mentioned already experience social exclusion to one degree or another. It may not be deliberate or obvious. But the fact that they are different stirs up some unconscious fears in the community. But the scriptures remind us that, whether we like it or not, no matter how big a threat we find them, they are our brothers and sisters and we must embrace our responsibilities towards them. In today's gospel extract, you will notice that the first fruit of the healing of Jesus was the reintegration of the leper back into the community. That was the point of Jesus commanding the leper to go to the High Priest. Only the High Priest had the authority to lift the exclusion order.

Leprosy is symbolic of all sin and all disordered life. It cuts us off from our brothers and sisters, from the body of Christ. But the primary responsibility for reintegration rests not with the excluded one but with the community. It is the parable of the Lost Sheep under a different guise. Immediately after telling them this parable, Jesus was challenged by his adversaries. Why does he insist on mingling with sinners and tax collectors? It is not the healthy who need the doctor but the sick. And when it came to illness, lepers were first in line. Today too, it is those who are most despised who have first call on the care of the Church.

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