NOTES for Mar 1:40-45
These words sound unusual: if You are willing, You can make me clean. We are used to every petitioner putting his own desire first. And when we see this request, we understand that this man's rejection has produced in him an immense and genuine humility. In fact, this is the ideal of petitionary prayer.
And when one thinks about this, it becomes all the more terrible to see this man's behavior after his healing. Why can he not fulfill a simple request, at least out of gratitude?! This is hard to understand; each person has to struggle painfully with this text.
But it is not by chance that the Church chooses for us what is included in the Gospel reading. Let us notice the words with which the reading begins: and in the morning, rising very early, He went out and departed to a deserted place, and there He prayed. These words immediately soften in some way the storm of the soul caused by the former leper's behavior, and one remembers another petitionary prayer: Your will be done. It is not so difficult to say the best prayer in the world; it is much harder afterward to ascend the cross. This is exactly what does not happen with the leper, and sometimes with us.