NOTES for Mar 1:35-44
Human joy sometimes expresses itself in strange ways. A person who has suffered for many years from an incurable disease comes to a Prophet unknown to him, whom he most likely sees for the first time. This Prophet heals him and says: keep silent, do not chatter about Me on every corner; go and do what the Torah prescribes for cleansing. But the healed man, instead of doing what he was told to do, joyfully shouts on every corner about what happened to him, plainly blurting out what he had been asked to keep silent about.
What is this: talkativeness? Neglect and disrespect toward the One who healed him? It is hardly either one. Rather, not everything, sadly, is serious for us that really is serious. Or better: for us, only what is serious to us is serious in earnest. For the healed man, throughout the whole time of his sickness, the sickness itself was at the center. It blocked out the whole world for him, and he can hardly be blamed for that.
But now his life changes: Someone enters it who is able and ready to deliver him from sickness, to heal and cleanse him. What then: should all attention be given to Him? Surely it should. If He delivered him from sickness, if He is from God, then he should listen to Him and do everything exactly as He commands.
Why then does the healed man act otherwise? Perhaps precisely because he has not yet truly been healed. His body is already healthy, but his attention is still entirely focused on the sickness that is no longer there, but whose memory is alive. And the healed man shouts on every corner: not about God and not about the One who healed him, but about the sickness that is no more. He shouts so much that he even forgets what the mysterious Savior asked of him.