23 And he said to them: Doubtless you will say to me this similitude: Physician, heal thyself: as great things as we have heard done in Capharnaum, do also here in thy own country.
Et ait illis : Utique dicetis mihi hanc similitudinem : Medice cura teipsum : quanta audivimus facta in Capharnaum, fac et hic in patria tua.
24 And he said: Amen I say to you, that no prophet is accepted in his own country.
Ait autem : Amen dico vobis, quia nemo propheta acceptus est in patria sua.
25 In truth I say to you, there were many widows in the days of Elias in Israel, when heaven was shut up three years and six months, when there was a great famine throughout all the earth.
In veritate dico vobis, multae viduae erant in diebus Eliae in Israel, quando clausum est caelum annis tribus et mensibus sex, cum facta esset fames magna in omni terra :
26 And to none of them was Elias sent, but to Sarepta of Sidon, to a widow woman.
et ad nullam illarum missus est Elias, nisi in Sarepta Sidoniae, ad mulierem viduam.
27 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet: and none of them was cleansed but Naaman the Syrian.
Et multi leprosi erant in Israel sub Elisaeo propheta : et nemo eorum mundatus est nisi Naaman Syrus.
28 And all they in the synagogue, hearing these things, were filled with anger.
Et repleti sunt omnes in synagoga ira, haec audientes.
29 And they rose up and thrust him out of the city; and they brought him to the brow of the hill, whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong.
Et surrexerunt, et ejecerunt illum extra civitatem : et duxerunt illum usque ad supercilium montis, super quem civitas illorum erat aedificata, ut praecipitarent eum.
30 But he passing through the midst of them, went his way.
Ipse autem transiens per medium illorum, ibat.
The Gospel speaks to us of Naaman, the valiant general of the King of Syria's army. He was cured by bathing in the Jordan, although he did not belong to the race of Israel. Later on Jesus was to plunge himself into the same river and to communicate a sanctifying virtue to its waters. Naaman, therefore, is a figure of the heathen whom the Church by baptism cures of the leprosy of sin. Peter, says Tertullian, has baptised in the Tiber, and those that he has cleansed from leprosy of sin, have abandoned the waters of Damascus, by which is mean their sensual life.
Let us renew ourselves in the spirit of baptism by purifying our hearts in the salutary bath of penitence. This will cure them of the leprosy of the soul called sin.
