Which of us can call himself healthy, physically and spiritually? In each of us sits the "leprosy" of sin: in the corners of the soul that God's light has not reached, or more precisely, in those corners where we have not yet let Him in. But the Lord longs to fill us with this light completely; it is no accident that to the leper's words, "Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean," He answers, "I am willing; be cleansed."

And it is the Lord Himself who says that "the Spirit gives life" and that "the flesh profits nothing" (John 6:63), thus emphasizing what is most important in our life. This means that Jesus' words about His desire to cleanse the sick man can and must be applied to the healing not only of the body, but also of the soul. It turns out that the Lord addresses each of us with the words: "I am willing; be cleansed." To this only one more thing must be added: our own desire...

God is one for all, and therefore He saves everyone: both Jews and Gentiles, circumcised and uncircumcised, clean and unclean (for He does not turn away from the leper). He saves all by faith, not by works. But what does this faith consist in? It turns out that for God to become salvation for us, we must not only listen to His words but also do them. What a paradox! On the one hand - only faith; on the other - by not doing God's will, we risk ending up under the wreckage of our own life.

In the Gospel we can find many stories about miraculous healings and the casting out of demons from different people. These miracles are usually called "signs," that is, they serve to show something. For example, in today's stories the miracles are meant to illustrate the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy about the coming of the Messiah, who was to "take upon Himself our infirmities and diseases."

For the first readers of the Gospel, who knew these prophecies by heart, the allusion was completely clear: these healings are only the beginning of the work of saving the world, which Christ accomplishes in history through His voluntary suffering (Isa. 53). Thus the context of this prophecy, and Matthew's references to it, leads us beyond the bounds of a particular miracle, which in general has little to do with us personally, and brings us into the history of the world's salvation, where all the events in which the prophecy was fulfilled have their place, and into our own life, when Christ saved our life, healed our sickness, and conquered evil around us or within us.