Three Sundays in a row we have read Gospel passages involving “healing” stories. They often feel so simple, and so cut and dry: there was an illness that was healed, and Jesus praises the person for their faith. This reading goes the same way with the slight wrench that Jesus asks the man he “made clean” to not tell anyone else. The man unfortunately doesn’t oblige and Jesus turns into such a celebrity that he feels the need to escape for a couple months or so. 

What strikes me here is the context of the Gospel with the reality of the first reading. How, when placed together, perhaps the reality of the first perhaps inhibits the possibility of healing in the second. In the first reading we are shocked by this scene that is set up of a priest yelling “unclean! unclean!” It seems The Vatican, or whoever put the lectionary together as it is wanted to juxtapose this with the story of Jesus “making clean” a man with leprosy. This juxtaposition I find interesting because in many ways it leaves a lot lacking. And it leaves a lot lacking in a way that is all too common and familiar. 

This juxtaposition made me reflect a lot on what it means to heal. We live within a church and tradition that has caused immense violence. It has called many people unclean, sold enslaved people, professed racism and antisemitism, demanded that women be oppressed, colonized indigenous people of America, and then threw them into violent and murderous boarding schools. We know all this. And sometimes the Vatican will say “I’m sorry.” Maybe they’ll give a little money and they’ll change their official position on things like slavery and the Doctrine of Discovery. A simple change of course like the Gospel story today. The Church has created over and over again many people like the man in the story today, that is, people in need of healing because of the hands of the Church. So I’m left with one simple question: what does this healing look like? What can it even look like? What does it mean to be healed from the reality of sickness, but still sit within the after of the trauma of infection, exclusion, oppression, and cultural genocide? The man in the story today runs off telling people that Jesus is miraculous, but what does the man’s life look like in the following years? 

This is a question that also interests me as a member of The Just Word. A Catholic project that is supposed to be life-giving and liberative. How do we be life-giving and liberative in the aftermath of the Church? While I am not trying to cast any shame or blame or tell people to run from the Church, I find it important to reflect on how that context affects the way in which we approach a concept like healing.  

So what does healing look like? Perhaps psycho-theorist Frantz Fanon is best to speak here. In his book The Wretched of the Earth (1961) Fanon describes the colonial subject in Africa: the people refused personhood by the colonizers. And thus Fanon then also describes the process of decolonization, the vital process of these people reclaiming their personhood in spite of the colonizers: 

“Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is clearly an agenda for total disorder. But it cannot be accomplished by the wave of a magic wand, a natural cataclysm, or a gentleman’s agreement. Decolonization, we know, is an historical process: In other words, it can only be understood… as we can discern the history-making movement which gives it form and substance” (2).

Thus healing, like decolonization, and also one of the ultimate goals of decolonization, takes on a multifaceted and revolutionary category in and of itself. Healing in its fullest sense is a complete and total reorganization of society, first through the process of disorder. This means disordering entire social relations and economies through the decolonial pursuit. This could look like many things: reappropriating land (see Land Back movements), deconstructing private property, reparations, complete autonomy of self-governed nations, an end to the exploitation of the global south, supporting the Palestinian people, and more. It is a disordering of the deepest and most foundational aspects of our society. A disordering and reordering that genuinely addresses and confronts the harm that colonialism of all forms has done to this world and its people. I would recommend reading Fanon’s entire book of course. It inspired and gave guidance to many people and movements across the world including Malcom X and the Black Panthers. 

Decolonize this Place is a collective of people searching for ways to address and combat the ongoing settler colonialism throughout the country. Centered in New York City they seek to organize and educate around every modern iteration of settler colonialism and neocolonialism. The materials section of their website is especially helpful for the zines and resources they have.

The musical artist Chuquimamani-Condori is a Bolivian American artist who makes “folk” music using musical sounds, rhythms, and techniques from their home Andean region, and electronic music, having released music under the name Elysia Crampton and E + E. This past year they released an album under their Aymara name: Chuquimamani-Condori. The album DJ E was one of my favorite albums last year. It sounded new in a way I had not felt in a long time. It feels like a sonic rebirth in many ways. Perhaps this is because of the way they build waves of sound and crescending production.

Here is a description of their music from an interview a couple years back: 

“Crampton has defined her work as “folk music,” foregrounding its primordial meaning: music tied to a constant (re)definition of identity through memory, history, and past/future continuity. From early times to the present, evocations of huayno, cumbia, saya, caporal, and Huancayo styles have helped our Andean community, living in and out of diaspora, thrive. Their music made me feel seen. It made me want to heal the wounds that colonialism had inflicted on me my whole life — wounds I previously lacked the capacity to see.”