Old Testament
Psalm 103:1-5
1 Praise the LORD, my soul! All that is within me, praise his holy name!
2 Praise the LORD, my soul, and don’t forget all his benefits,
3 who forgives all your sins, who heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies,
5 who satisfies your desire with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
New Testament
Mark 1:40-45
40 A leper came to him, begging him, kneeling down to him, and saying to him, “If you want to, you can make me clean.”
41 Being moved with compassion, he stretched out his hand, and touched him, and said to him, “I want to. Be made clean.”
42 When he had said this, immediately the leprosy departed from him and he was made clean.
43 He strictly warned him and immediately sent him out,
44 and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anybody, but go show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing the things which Moses commanded, for a testimony to them.”
45 But he went out, and began to proclaim it much, and to spread about the matter, so that Jesus could no more openly enter into a city, but was outside in desert places. People came to him from everywhere.
Psalm 103 begins with a small act of resistance: bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of his benefits. When the body is failing, when the appointment is delayed, when the days blur into one another, memory can narrow to pain. The psalm widens it again, naming the Lord who forgives, heals, redeems, and crowns his people with steadfast love and compassion.
Mark shows that compassion is not merely a feeling. A leper, made unclean and kept at a distance, dares to kneel and ask. Jesus does what the law and the fear of contagion had trained others not to do: he reaches out and touches. The kingdom does not heal by standing back. It draws near.
So we pray for our common life around sickness. For wards and clinics where people are treated as neighbours, not as problems; for staff who must carry heavy stories without becoming hard; for systems that do not ostracise the chronically ill through delay, suspicion, or shame.
And we ask for the Church to learn Christ’s touch: to make room at the table for the weak as kin, to visit, to listen, to bring food, to keep watch. Lord, keep us tender where the world grows brisk. Let compassion become courage.