"Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean."
Obviously we're all quite happy that Jesus' reply was that He did will it...
...but what if He had said, "No, it is not my will."
During this break I had the great blessing of revisiting one of my favorite books on one of my favorite people: a young woman who was my role model, especially in high school. Her name is Venerable Maria Teresa Quevedo, better known to her friends as "Teresita". She was a young woman, endowed with beauty, charm, freshness. She liked to play tennis and basketball and was the star of each party she went to, but not because of any worldliness. In fact, she was quite detached from the world, which made her even more attractive. She was cloaked in Mary at all times. She joined the order of Sisters that her aunts were a part of and which taught at her high school at an early age of 17 with special parental permission. She was in a hurry to become a saint, though I doubt she knew her death would come so soon. Her health was ravaged by tubercular meningitis, and died at the age of 20.
All of her peers, fellow Sisters, and family implored her to seek a miracle from God. She yearned for Heaven, but obeyed her parents and asked God for her health. She attained a time or two of reprieve from her illness, but no lasting cure occurred.
It sounds funny to the world...a 20 year old woman ready to die, to be in the throes of pain, to suffer it with grace, even to the point that others around her didn't realize the extent of her pain...except for her father (the physician) and his assistant, who gave her more than 30 spinal taps to relieve her immense headaches.
I really really hope that the leper in the Gospel story would have responded like dear Teresita. With yearning to do the will of God. With intense love that would have sent him straight to Heaven. Perhaps, while physical healing helped advance this leper in sainthood, illness helped Teresita toward her own. Each soul responds differently, and God knows that best of all.
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