“If you wish, you can make me clean.”
Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand.
touched the leper, and said to him,
“I do will it. Be made clean.”
As I read the week’s Gospel, I smiled. I am sitting past midnight in my apartment, extremely anxious and stressed about my final exam, the main oral exam on Friday! I am nervous and scared (like every exam—ask my parents), and I am stress studying!
This Gospel made me smile—it made me realize I am that leper! the unclean spirit but with faith way less than him. He believed and rushed to Jesus while I am chewing my nails off their beds in anxiety and stress eating food!
All my life I have been known to make a to-do list every morning and try to adhere to it—most days I fail, but it always gives me a sense of control of the day! Knowing where I am expected to be at any given time makes me feel secure about my life. So whenever I walk into an exam hall, mentally I know how well prepared I am or how I could be (regrets of procrastinating), and that combined with the fact that I have no control of what will be asked or what patients I will be allotted or the fact that I may blank out of sheer anxiety and stress (happened once 8 years ago) gives me a tummy ache, and the cortisol hormone is soaring high in my blood!
And as always, my mother and father would laugh at my nerves and calm me down with a prayer and blessing (via video call). I always pray for the help to recollect what I know and never ask for an easy exam!
So today while I share some of my anxious thoughts, I learn from the leper in the Gospel to have faith and surrender to Jesus and ask him to make me clean of these thoughts and be the doctor I should be to my patients!!
Keep me in your prayers!
AMEN
