Gratitude for Prayer and for Prayers Answered, Twenty-Eighth Sunday (C), October 9, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Immaculate Conception Seminary, Huntington, New York
Retreat for Columbia University Students
Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
October 9, 2022
2 Kings 5:14-17, Ps 98, 2 Tim 2:8-13, Lk 17:11-19

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• As we approach the end of our retreat on going Into the Deep: Learning and Living the Art of Prayer, we have examples in today’s readings of prayers of intercession, petition and thanksgiving, the attributes of faith and perseverance, and the reaction we should have to the encounter with God in prayer. They lead collectively to what our fundamental response should be to the whole retreat. Let’s go into the deep with the help of the Word of God.
• In the first reading, we see the healing of Naaman the Syrian. We get only the end of the story in today’s passage, but the whole miracle is key for us to grasp for our Christian faith. When this powerful Army commander of the King of Aram was diagnosed with leprosy, he and the King who loved him had no idea what to do. Previously in a raid they had captured a girl from Israel who had become the servant of Naaman’s wife. Having doubtless heard Naaman and his wife lamenting the situation, the girl said, in an example of intercession, “If only my master would present himself to the prophet in Samaria, he would cure him of his leprosy.” The King told Naaman he should go and sent him, along with a letter of introduction and appeal to the King of Israel, with an enormous retinue as well as ten silver talents, six thousand gold pieces, and ten festal garments. The King of Israel, upon reading the letter, deemed it a provocation to war, since he knew he was not a god and had no means to cure Naaman of leprosy. When Elisha the prophet, however, heard about Naaman’s arrival and the King of Israel’s response, he said, “Let him come to me and find out that there is a prophet in Israel.” When Naaman arrived, however, Elisha, who obviously expected him, sought to test his faith. He didn’t even come to greet him. He simply sent a note saying, “Go and wash seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will heal, and you will be clean.” Naaman responded with anger, saying, “I thought that he would surely come out and stand there to invoke the Lord his God, and would move his hand over the spot, and thus cure the leprosy. Are not the rivers of Damascus, the Abana and the Pharpar, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be cleansed?” And in his indignation, he began to leave. His servants, however, came up to reason with him. “If the prophet had told you to do something extraordinary, would you not have done it?,” they asked. “All the more now, since he said to you, ‘Wash and be clean,’ should you do as he said.” And so Naaman went down and plunged into the Jordan seven times at the word of Elisha and, as we see in today’s excerpt, his flesh became again like the flesh of a little child, and he was totally cleansed.
• There are several lessons we learn from this in our Christian life, but one of the most important is to trust in the means God gives us. It might seem incredible, for example, that water over our forehead and the words,“I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” are enough to wipe away sin, make us God’s children, and fill us with the indwelling of the Trinity, but that is what in fact occurs. We might conceive of many other ways our post-baptismal sins might be forgiven than the Sacrament of Confession, like long years of difficult penances out of contrition, but Jesus wanted his mercy accessible and hence founded the Sacrament on Easter Sunday giving his power to absolve sins to the same priests to whom he was sending out to celebrate the Eucharist. We might imagine lots of arduous ways that God might want us to approach him, but he comes down from heaven to our altars and remains in our tabernacles waiting for us, to make prayer and worship easy. If we would be willing to do something hard for God, to accept something much more difficult, why not accept with faith the means God has provided? The second lesson we learn from Naaman is what to do once we have received God’s grace. He returns to thank God through Elisha. And when we did, we see that the Lord had a greater gift in mind for Naaman: the grace of the realization that there is no God in all the earth except the Lord and the resolution that he would no longer offer sacrifices or worship to false gods, but only to the true Lord.
• A similar two-part miracle happened in the Gospel in the scene of the healing of the ten lepers. These miserable victims of Hansen’s disease give us a powerful example of persevering prayer as they cried out, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” Jesus heard and Jesus did. All ten were cured of a disease that had been eating away their flesh and bones, that had made them stink worse than skunks. We speak today a lot about marginalization, but no one was more marginalized than these lepers. Their condition made them the worst of outcasts and forced them to stay at least 50 feet away from any non-leper. Whenever anyone drew near, they needed to yell out “unclean!, unclean!.” It cut them off from their family members. It also cut them off from the communal worship of God as they could never return to the Synagogue on Saturday or to the Temple on the major holy days. But at their cry for mercy, Jesus healed them all and sent them to the priests, which was the means set up in the Mosaic Law for their cure to be verified by affirming that the disease had stopped growing and they were no longer contagious. But the text of St. Luke implies that as they were heading to the priest, they were completely cured. They no longer had their leprous sores, and their bodies had been made whole again. After recognizing that the miracle for which they had prayed and longed for had been granted, we would have expected that all of them would have been rejoicing almost as if they had been raised from the dead. But only one of the ten returned to thank the Lord Jesus who had given them this gift. Jesus poignantly asks, “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine?”
• Jesus wished them all to return not because he had worked the miracle with impure motives to get them to solicit their gratitude, but so that he might give them an even greater gift than the stupendous physical cure. He wanted to give them all what he gave the Samaritan who returned, the grace of salvation by faith. After the healed man fell down at his feet to thank him, Jesus told him, “Stand up and go. Your faith has saved you!” Jesus came into the world not fundamentally to heal our bodies but to restore our souls. He came not to remedy our ills but to redeem our lives. In order to receive these greater gifts, however, we need gratefully to be in relationship with God. While all ten men were cured of the physical leprosy, nine retained a form of leprosy of the soul, an ingratitude that took for granted the greatest gift they had received in life until then. Only the grateful leper would receive the gift of salvation because only he had a heart that was opened to receive it. The other nine didn’t and Jesus made note of it, saying, “Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?” The other nine lepers were presumably Jews and Jesus was implying that it was shocking that only the Samaritan returned because the Jews had been trained by God for centuries in the prayers of the Psalms and in the incredible events of salvation history to give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his mercy endures forever. If anyone should have learned how to say thanks to God, it should have been the Jews. But many of them took God’s generosity, God’s goodness, for granted.
• I’ve always thought that the nine who didn’t return likely looked at their disease with anger toward God, as if he had somehow sadistically chosen for unjust punishment such that when they were cured they looked at it the way people might view getting released from an unkind kidnapper: they would be grateful for the liberation but they likely wouldn’t send a thank-you note to the one who had held them in captivity. But the Samarian, even though his body had been disintegrating, his soul hadn’t been destroyed by leprosy of bitterness, complaining, cursing, or ingratitude. His fundamental relationship with God was still there. He likely thanked God for all the little things he received from his hands, like the generosity of people who would provide food, or give a kind word of compassion. And when he received the big grace of his cure, he did what he probably always did, and immediately sought to thank the Giver. And he likely grew to thank God even for his years of leprosy, because if he hadn’t been a leper, he may never have encountered Jesus the way he did and never would have received the gift of salvation by faith.
• It’s important for us as Christians to focus on gratitude. As I mentioned when we were discussing the forms of prayer, prayer of thanksgiving is essential for us. In today’s Alleluia verse, we have St. Paul’s words to the first Christians, “In all circumstances, give thanks, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” We have been blessed with gifts of faith through Jesus far greater than the Jews ever received, but do we readily thank God for his gifts and, through that gratitude, open ourselves even more profoundly to a life-changing relationship with the Divine Giver? Or do we behave like the nine other lepers? Couldn’t Jesus say, “Where are the other nine?” with regard to the gift of our Baptism, since so few of us really thank him for this most important day in our life. Couldn’t Jesus query, “Where are the other nine?” with regard to Sunday Mass, since six of seven Catholics don’t come on Sunday when we must, and so many more don’t come during the week, when we could but choose not to. Couldn’t he ask, “Where are the other nine?” with respect to the Sacrament of his Mercy that restores us to the way to salvation, because so many never or seldom come, even to confess ingratitude. Couldn’t Jesus wonder, “Where are the other nine?” about Sacred Scripture, which bathes us in the cleansing, saving power of his word, because so few of us ever take up the Bible to read it and hear God’s voice. Many Catholics are known far more among their family members and friends for complaining than for gratitude. Some would complain about the menu at the Last Supper and regularly behave as if the glass is never full, the beach is too sunny, the water is too wet. When they’re asked about a movie, or a book, or an article, they start with the part they didn’t like rather than the many parts they found great. When asked about how they’re doing, they moan about a slight toothache rather than express gratitude that their eyes, ears, nose and every joint of our body is without pain. Many of us similarly grumble about what we don’t have, rather than rejoice with appreciation at what we do. That’s why today’s readings are so important.
• At every Mass, one of the most important dialogues in human life occurs. The priest says, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.” Everyone responds, “It is right and just.” And then the priest replies with a saying of great theological depth: “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, Holy Father, almighty and ever-living God.” It’s right, it’s just, it’s fitting, it’s appropriate for us to give God thanks, “always and everywhere.” It’s right, just, fitting and appropriate for us to do so on sunny days and rainy days, on days we feel like a million bucks and days we’re in the hospital, on days when we’re attending weddings and those we’re attending funerals of loved ones, on days we ace exams and on those we bomb them, on days when we get promotions and bonuses at work and days we get pink slips, on days when we win and on days we lose. It’s right and just to thank God alwaysand everywhere. It’s our duty to thank God because he has directly willed or permitted everything that has happened to us, both what the world considers good and what the world considers bad, because even out of the bad — like leprosy in Naaman or the Samaritan — he seeks to draw spiritual good, for “everything works out for the good for those who love God” (Rom 8:28).
• Every Mass we’re called to grow in this spirit of thanksgiving, because the Eucharist is Jesus’ own prayer of Thanksgiving to the Father. The Greek word from which we derive the word “Eucharist” means “thanksgiving.” Saint John Henry Newman, whose feast day the Church remembers today, wrote in some homiletic notes that “gratitude is a kind of love.” In the Eucharist we express our love for God who himself loved us so much that he gave his life so that we might have it to the full.
• It’s always stopped me in my tracks that right before Jesus said the words of consecration on the night he would be betrayed, on the vigil of his crucifixion, he took bread and, as we’ll hear anew in a few minutes, “gave thanks.” He gave thanks, because it is right always and everywhere, our duty and our salvation, to do so. He gave thanks because he was constantly thanking the Father. He gave thanks because he knew that the Father would bring the greatest good out of the greatest evil of all time, which would happen to him after the Mass was done. He gave thanks because it would be through his passion, death and resurrection, that Jesus would institute the means by which we would be able to enter into his own relationship with the Father. The Mass is the school in which we participate in Jesus’ own thanksgiving, the thanksgiving the Church makes continuously from the rising of the sun to its setting. The Lord has done far more for us than he ever did for the ten lepers. At Mass he gives us in a concrete way even more than what he gave to the one grateful leper when he said, “Your faith has saved you!” This is where he gives himself to us as salvation-in-the-flesh. No matter what hardships we’re enduring, no matter what problems we’re facing, no matter what illnesses we’re bearing, God comes into our world, to accompany us, to strengthen us, to heal us, to help us. He comes down to save us. And so at the end of this retreat, in the context of the Mass, we say the only worthy thing we can to God’s incredible generosity: “Thanks be to God!” God bless you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! It is truly right, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you this thanks and praise! Amen!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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