In my mind I keep images of Pope Francis to retrieve whenever I need inspiration, much as one would keep one’s spouse’s or friend’s photograph in one’s wallet. For already, in just a few years, the media have chalked up a good hoard of these images, of which his recent visit to the Philippines has a substantial share. Among them, my favorites would include one in which the pope, all smiles, peers out from behind a Bernini column, and another in which he kisses the head of a man covered with tumors and embraces him, touches his face and prays with him.
Medical experts label the man’s disease as neurofibromatosis, “a genetic disorder that disturbs cell growth in [the] nervous system, causing tumors to form on nerve tissue.” The tumors appear like bulbs on one’s skin, and even through the thin hairs of one’s head.
Twice I have seen persons afflicted with this disease. The first in church, a woman, a sight that repulsed and drove me to keep my distance, and the second at a hospital, an elderly man, who was having his chemotherapy.
Obviously, the pope did not choose the name Francis for no reason. He clearly has every intention of walking in the footsteps of St. Francis of Assisi, especially in the latter’s love for the poor and the sick.
The story goes that one day while riding near Assisi, St. Francis met a leper. He fought off his natural revulsion, dismounted, kissed the hand of the leper, and gave him a coin. After riding on his horse again, he looked around but did not find the leper anywhere. Which so filled him with such wonder and joy, that, after a few days, he decided to visit the dwelling places of the lepers, and as before gave them alms and kissed them, thenceforth making the visit a regular practice.
Not many people in our day would kiss anyone with neurofibromatosis or leprosy, although many — myself included — might have help at the ready but would give it without skin contact. While making a documentary film and seeing how she cleaned and fed the dying destitute, a journalist told Mother Teresa, “I would not do it for a million dollars.” To which the nun replied, “Neither would I.”
No doubt about it, the pope and St. Francis and Mother Teresa did what they did not for themselves but for Christ, who identified himself with the poverty-stricken, the homeless, the sick and the imprisoned.
And Jesus walked the talk. Mark writes that on one occasion a leper came to Jesus, knelt before him and begged him, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand, touched the leper, and said, “I do will it. Be made clean.”
Jesus could very well have healed the leper without touching him, especially as the Mosaic Law prohibited any physical contact with human uncleanness. When Jesus held out his hand to touch him, the leper must have felt that, while his disease had disfigured him, the Lord saw through this to his wholeness, his dignity as a child of God, who had created him in his image and likeness.
Does God ask of us to cure diseases? If not, what does he require?
Not to turn away from the disfigured and the ill (as I have often done). Not to deal with them from a safe distance, where I cannot get their smell and the spray of their spit and a smear from their festering sores. Because even if they get two or three coins or a shirt or a piece of bread from me they would not feel my presence, the thing that they want most of all.
As Henri Nouwen puts it, “When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.”
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