WHEN Jesus sent out his 12 disciples, He instructed them to heal the sick. Besides that general command, however, He charged them specifically, to “cleanse lepers” (Matthew x, 8). In doing so, He wanted their practice to reflect His own.

On one occasion we are told of a group of ten whose leprosy is healed and on another of one who comes alone and begs for healing: “If you want to, you can cure me.” “Of course, I want to,” the man is told, and the leprosy leaves him at once. But what is it that makes leprosy special? Why should it be singled out?

What the Gospels call leprosy may have included disfiguring skin conditions as well as the affliction we now know as Hansen’s disease. It makes no difference; what matters is that those who were identified as lepers were cast out and shunned. If Jesus’s ministry was to the poor, then lepers were the poor of the poor. Others, however poor they might be, could comfort themselves with the thought that at least they were not suffering from leprosy; there were some worse off than them. So caring for those with leprosy was a powerful symbol which points to the very heart of Jesus’s ministry to heal, to salve, to save, to reach out to those whose need was most extreme.

Those brought up in Britain may know little about leprosy, but nowadays the news is good. Effective treatment is available, and the number of people suffering from the disease has diminished dramatically.

In 2001 there were 763,262 cases worldwide, but by 2004 there were 407,791. Indeed, experts now speak of the possibility of eliminating leprosy altogether. There is genuine cause for optimism, but success is not inevitable. What can prevent it? Some people with the disease live in remote places and are unaware of developments, but the greatest obstacle is fear.

More than ten years ago I heard a radio programme about leprosy and the ease with which it could now be treated, but it also explained that those most at risk were those who were reluctant to come for treatment. Why should they be reluctant? Because they were frightened by the stigma attached to the disease. Fear was the key. And so they ignored the symptoms. Then the disease took hold. What was true then remains true now.

There we have the situation in a nutshell: a cruel disease; an effective cure; yet people still at risk because they cannot break free of old fears and seek the help which is available. Most of us may not be directly familiar with leprosy itself; it may seem another world; but, when we pause, we can recognise this pattern even in ourselves: deep wounds still aching, because we are frightened of change. Leprosy is more than a disease; it is a symbol of a condition.

In his memoirs the art historian Kenneth Clark described a religious experience he had in a church, unconnected, he said, “with the harmonious beauty of the architecture”. He spoke of his whole being as “irradiated by a kind of heavenly joy, far more intense than anything I had known before”.

And this experience, which took only a matter of minutes, created in him a state of mind which lasted for several months. “That I had ‘felt the finger of God’,” he concluded, “I am quite sure.”

So how did he respond to what he called “a flood of grace”? He let it fade. “My life was far from blameless,” he explained. “I was too deeply embedded in the world to change course” (The Other Half: A Self-Portrait, 1977).

What seems dramatic here is repeated in many lives. We know that all is not well. Deep down we are not at peace. But often we are too complacent or lazy or fearful to change. We prefer the façade. It hurts to acknowledge our sexual sloth and infidelity, our hypocrisy or self-absorption. These too are stigmas like leprosy. Like the man in the Gospel we need courage to seek healing.

On his deathbed Clark was reconciled. We should not wait so long.

Monsignor Roderick Strange is the Rector of the Pontifical Beda College, Rome.