Today
we are given one of the many encounters of Jesus’ healing someone
who had the terrible disease of leprosy. Apart from the fact
that leprosy was physically so horrible, with a person’s flesh
literally rotting on their body, it also had the added pain of
excluding them from the community because of the fear of
contamination. Anyone who had leprosy had to live outside the
community. Notice how it says in the Gospel that when Jesus
heals this man he ‘sternly warned him not to tell anyone’.
But in the man’s enthusiasm he couldn’t help himself and began
talking about it everywhere. Because of this people realised
that Jesus had been in contact with a leper and so he could now be
infected himself. As a result he then had to stay outside the
towns ‘in places where nobody lived’. This kind of thing
must have been very frustrating for Jesus, but he had to put up with
it and adapt his mission accordingly.
I’m
sure there were many thousands of people in Jesus’ time who also
needed healing, but who didn’t ever get to meet Jesus. Jesus
healed those people who came to him and asked for help, but that
would have been relatively few. Do you ever wonder why the Lord
allowed so many others to remain sick, or why He allows us to be
sick? Is it possible that any good can come out of the
sicknesses we have to go through?
Recently
I came across a beautiful story about the composer Beethoven
(1770-1827). Ludvig Van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany and
he really had quite a sad life. He suffered from a great lack
of affection, because his mother died when he was very young and his
father was an alcoholic who used to beat him. His father
eventually died as a drunk on the streets. His biological
brother never helped him either and on top of it all symptoms of
deafness started to disturb him, leaving him nervous and irritable.
There was however, a German prince who became his benefactor
and was like a second father to him. But then the prince died
and between his deafness and loneliness he went into a terrible
depression and eventually began to wonder whether there was any point
in him going on living.
At
that stage Beethoven could only hear using a kind of horn-shaped
trumpet in his ear. He always carried with him a notebook, so
that he could write and communicate with others, but many didn’t
have the patience for this and so he began to feel more isolated and
alone. Feeling that nobody understood him or wanted to help
him, Beethoven withdrew more and more into himself and avoided
people. He became so depressed that he prepared his will saying that
maybe it was better for him to commit suicide.
But
then God’s providence intervened. A young blind woman who
lived in the same boarding house where he had moved to, told him one
night, shouting into his ears: “I would give everything to see the
moonlight.” Listening to her, Beethoven was moved to tears
because he realised that he could see! And he could compose music and
write it on paper! A strong will to live came back to him and
led him to compose one of his most beautiful pieces:
“Mondscheinsonate” – “Moonlight Sonata”.
In
its main theme, the melody imitates and resembles the slow steps of
people, possibly of Beethoven himself and others, carrying the coffin
of the German prince, his friend, patron and benefactor. Some
music scholars say that the notes that repeat themselves,
insistently, in the main theme of the 1º movement of the Sonata,
might be the syllables of the words “Warum? Warum”? (Why? Why?)
or another similar word. Years later, having overcome his
sorrow, Beethoven wrote the incomparable “Ode to Joy” from his
“Ninth Symphony”, Beethoven’s magnum opus, which crowned
the life work of this remarkable composer.
He
conducted the first performance himself in 1824. By then because he
was totally deaf, he failed to hear the applause. One of the soloists
gently turned him around to see the hall full of a wildly cheering
crowd. It is said the “Ode to Joy” expresses Beethoven’s
gratitude to life and to God for not having committed suicide.
And all this thanks to that blind young woman, who inspired in him
the desire to translate into musical notes, a moonlit night.
Using his skill, Beethoven, the composer who could not hear,
portrayed through this beautiful melody, the beauty of a night bathed
by the moonlight, for a girl who could not see it with her physical
eyes.
We
do not know why we have to suffer but perhaps more good comes out of
it than we realise. No doubt the blind girl who inspired
Beethoven could never have imagined that any good could have come
from her being blind and yet look what happened. I am sure that
when we get to heaven we will be amazed at how many parts of our life
that don’t seem to make any sense now, will all fit together.
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