Out Sweet Duty and Salvation, 32nd Wednesday (I), November 15, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Knights of Columbus Senior Leadership Retreat
“Supreme in Prayer, Work and Mission”
Villa Maria Guadalupe Retreat House, Stamford, Connecticut
Wednesday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Votive Mass for the Sanctification of Human Labor
November 15, 2023
Wis 6:1-11, Ps 82, 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 come to the end of this Senior Leadership Retreat, it’s providential that our Gospel reading is all about gratitude. Ten miserable victims of Hansen’s disease perseveringly cried out in desperation, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!,” and Jesus heard and had mercy. All ten were cured of a disease that had been eating away their flesh and bones, that had made them stink worse than skunks, that had made them the worst of outcasts, forcing them to stay at least 50 feet away from any non-leper, and to have to yell out, whenever anyone drew near, “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 go to the Synagogue on Saturday or to the Temple on the major holy days. At their cry for mercy, however, 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, that they were no longer contagious, and that they could be reintegrated. The text of St. Luke states that while 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 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 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 had fallen down at Jesus’ 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 maladies but to redeem our life. 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 type 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 merciful love endures forever (Ps 118:1 ff). If anyone should have learned how to say thanks to God, it should have been the Jews. But many of them at Jesus’ time took God’s generosity, God’s goodness, for granted.
• I’ve always believed that the nine who didn’t return likely looked at their disease with anger toward God, as if he had somehow sadistically chosen them for unjust punishment such that when they were cured they looked at it the way people might view getting released from an 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, or promise to pray for him. And when he received the huge grace of his cure, he did what he probably always did, and immediately sought to thank the Giver. He probably 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, because, as St. Paul reminds us in his First Letter to the Thessalonians (1 Thess 5:18), rendering constant thanks is indeed our vocation 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 about Christians today, “Where are the other nine?” with regard to the gift of our Baptism, since so few 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 five of six Catholics in the United States 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 take up the Bible each day to read it and hear God’s voice. Couldn’t he say, “Where are the other nine?,” with regard to so many tabernacles where the majority of his people leave him alone? Rather than gratitude, some Catholics would be eligible for honorary doctorates in complaining. Some regularly behave as if the glass is never full, the beach is too sunny, and the water is too wet. Like the Jews in the desert, we can often be complainers, who obsess about what we don’t have rather than gratefully thank God for what we do. When asked about how we’re doing, we moan about a slight toothache rather than express gratitude that our eyes, ears, nose and every joint of our body is without pain. Some even complain at the menu at the Last Supper. Many of us similarly grumble about what we don’t have, rather than rejoice with appreciation at what we do. We can be eaten alive by envy such that even when those we love are blessed, we can be upset about it, because we personally don’t have those same blessings. Like children, we may say a “quick word of thanks” when God gets us out of a jam, but then not really remain in a perpetual attitude of gratitude. That’s what we’re called to be as Christians, people who are constantly thanking God for the gift of our faith, of Creation, of Redemption, of his Son in the Sacraments, of the ability to pray, of the opportunities for us to love others, of the promise of heaven, of our family members, of our fellow Christians, of our Pope, bishops, priests, and deacons, and so many other things.
• We become a person who thanks God always and everywhere — and learns how to thank others too! — in our prayer. Some can think that some people are born naturally bubbly and grateful and that others are born with bad digestion such that they’re regularly complaining. Others say certain cultures, like the Filipinos, are more expressively grateful while others, like Scandanavians, are more stern and moaning. It’s not principally a thing of temperament or culture, however. I think it begins with our prayer. In our prayer, do we spend most of our time praising and thanking God, or do we spend it begging for mercy, asking for things for others or ourselves, or even whining? If we’re ever going to be able to thank God always and everywhere, the majority of our time in prayer should be in praise and thanksgiving. That’s a habit we can form. It’s a habit I’ve needed to form over many years, where we count our blessings and thank God for each of them. The more we do so, the more we see these blessings, and the more we acquire that attitude of gratitude that is essential for someone who is fully Catholic.
• Today in the Book of Wisdom, God tells us that he holds to a greater responsibility those to whom he has given more. He reminds kings and magistrates that he will hold them to a more “rigorous scrutiny,” and so challenges them to desire and long for his words, be instructed in them, and keep holy his precepts in order to become holy. Likewise for us, who have received the greatest blessings in the world — which are not mansions and lands and bank accounts, but the Sacraments, Sacred Scripture, and faith — he will hold us to a more rigorous scrutiny of how grateful we are for these gifts that are so much more valuable even than a miraculous cure from leprosy. He will give us all the grace we need to meet those higher standards of thanksgiving, but we need to desire and long for those graces and be grateful for them when they come. Leaders in the largest Catholic fraternal organization in the world have a vocation not just to be grateful but to be supreme in gratitude.
• The saint the whole Church celebrates today gives us a great lesson about how we can become people who live up to this standard of gratitude. St. Albert the Great, the 13th century Dominican Doctor of the Church, ended up writing 38 huge volumes on theology, Biblical interpretation, physics, geography, astronomy, mineralogy, chemistry and biology and because of that prodigious output, it might be presumed that everything came easy for him. It didn’t. He needed to persevere through various struggles in his studies. He confessed much later in life that as a young Dominican he had become so discouraged that he was strongly tempted to return to secular life but our Lady appeared to him and promised to ask for him illuminating grace in his studies if only he would persevere. He decided to persist, he received that light, and he bore tremendous fruit. His writings on science all began with wonder and gratitude for the way God the Creator had ordered the gift of his creation. His writings on the natural world were not just scientific but were an act of Thanksgiving. Even more so his writings on the gift of Sacred Scripture and on the mystery of who God is. He was able to pass on that wonder and gratitude for the gift of learning, wisdom and study to so many students, including St. Thomas Aquinas, and in his poverty, chastity and obedience, he became a living thanksgiving for God who is the true wealth, true love, and true source of freedom. We ask his intercession today that we, like him, might be grateful for everything, including our challenges.
• At every Mass, including once again in a few minutes, 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 we’re attending weddings and those we’re attending funerals of loved ones, on days we ace exams and 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 days we lose. It’s right and just to thank God always and 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 for those in today’s Gospel — he seeks to draw spiritual good, for “everything works out for the good for those who love God” (Rom 8:28).
• The Mass is Jesus’ own prayer of Thanksgiving to the Father. The Greek word from which we derive the word “Eucharist,” as you know, means “thanksgiving.” I’ve always been struck by the words of consecration. “At the time he was betrayed, … Jesus took bread, and giving thanks … said, ‘… This is my body … given…  for you.’” “In a similar way, when supper was ended, he took the chalice and once more giving thanks, gave it to his disciples, saying, … ‘This is the chalice of my blood.’” He gave thanks, because it is right always and everywhere, our duty and our salvation, to do so. 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 he 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 Jesus — literally “God saves” — gives himself to us as salvation-in-the-flesh. No matter what challenges 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 leadership retreat, as we prepare to receive our Savior, we say the only worthy thing we can to such incredible generosity: “Thanks be to God!” “Te alabamos, Señor!” “Deo gratias!” It is truly right, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give God this thanks and praise! Amen!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Reading 1
WIS 6:1-11

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