Thanking God, 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), October 10, 2010

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Anthony of Padua Church, New Bedford, MA
Twenty-Eighth Sunday in OT, Year C
October 10, 2010
2 Kings 5:14-17; 2 Tim 2:8-13; Lk 17:11-19

The following text guided today’s homily:

• Today’s first reading and Gospel are not simply about the Lord’s power to heal people of the dreadful disease of leprosy, but the larger point of how we’re supposed to respond when the Lord does give us an incredible gift like that.
  • Naaman was cured of leprosy, but the Lord had a greater gift in mind that came only after he came back to thank the prophet through whom God had given the cure. He came to realize there is no God in all the earth except the Lord and that he would no longer offer sacrifices or worship to false gods, but only to the true Lord.
  • The same thing happened in the Gospel. The Lord cured ten lepers, but had something even greater in mind — the gift of salvation — but only one received it, the one who came back.
• It’s significant that Jesus says that this man was a Samaritan. Like in the parable of the Good Samaritan, when Jesus highlights a Samaritan as the only one that took care of an ambushed man left to die while not just the Jews but the representatives of the holiest Jews — the priests and levites — gave excuses about why they needed to pass by on the opposite side of the road, so today Jesus mentions that the only one who came back was a Samaritan to highlight, basically, that his fellow Jews were a bunch of ingrates, who basically took for granted the incredible gift the Lord had given them.
• A priest I know once wondered what was going through the mind of the other nine, why they didn’t come back to say thanks for the incredible gift they had received. He tried to put words in each of their mouths:
  • One said, “I think we need to wait and see if the cure is for real, if it will last.”
  • The second said, “Besides, there’s plenty of time to see Jesus later, if we need to.”
  • The third said, “You know what: Maybe we never even had leprosy in the first place.”
  • The fourth said, “There was no doubt in my mind that we would get well someday.”
  • The fifth said, “I told you guys that if you think positively that you will be well, you will.”
  • The sixth said, “Jesus didn’t really do anything special; any rabbi could have done it.”
  • The seventh said, “Now that we are okay, we do still need him?”
  • The eight said, “What we need now is the temple priest, the one who can declare us clean.”
  • The last said, “Jesus said to go to the priest. He would be mad with us if we return to him now.”
• The point is they never came back. They never thanked him. Those who should have known better should have been the quickest to return.
• Now it turns to us, who by the sacraments and the Gospel are closest of all to Jesus and we’re called to ensure that we’re grateful like the Samaritan, and not ungrateful like those Jewish lepers who never thanked.
• We are called to be grateful. Sacred Scripture is replete with calls for gratitude:
  • 16:34 O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures for ever!
  • 100:4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him, bless his name!
  • 136:1 O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures for ever.
• Paul says
  • 5:18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
• Jesus’ whole life we see him giving thanks:
  • Mark 8:6 And he commanded the crowd to sit down on the ground; and he took the seven loaves, and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and they set them before the crowd.
  • 11:25 At that time Jesus declared, “I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes;”
  • John 11:41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.”
  • He thanked even during the Last Supper as he was preparing to give his body and blood for our salvation, thanking God before he broke the bread that he had changed into his body and before distributing the chalice containing the wine that had become his blood.
• For us to become like Jesus, we must become truly grateful people. We need to recognize God’s gifts and, like the Samaritan, return to thank him. And so today we say thank you, God the Father, for the gift of my:
  • Catholic faith — that I have come to know you, your Son and the truth about you, me and my place in the world;
  • Baptism — that I am truly your beloved Son and Daughter and that you live in me provided that I live in you
  • Gift of Mass — The greatest gift imaginable: your Son truly present in our world, whom I have the awesome privilege to receive
  • Confession — Whereby you cleanse me of the burden of my sins, return me to the state of my baptismal grace, and make heaven possible
  • Your holy Word — That I have the ability to hear, to read, to put into practice, so that I may live by your wisdom and help those around me to come to salvation
  • Holy spirit — to guide me
  • Jesus — to be my savior
  • Life — All I have is yours and I’m so grateful to be alive
  • Talents — All that I’m good at is a gift and I thank you for blessing with them
  • Mother and father who gave me life — They are or were not perfect, but their yes to me brought me into this world and through them you taught me so many important lessons
  • Brothers and sisters — I don’t or haven’t always gotten along with them, but my life is so much richer because of them
  • Job — That I have the ability to work, to do something for you and for others, to support myself and those I love
  • Vocation — To be not just another number, but to be a saint, to be a real spiritual great
  • Parish — Even though it requires more upkeep, I can’t imagine a more beautiful place to worship you. I can’t think of better people with whom to praise you
  • Spouse — You’ve chosen him or her to help make me holy, to collaborate with me in the task of salvation and raising up a family to your glory; even the hard things about marital life give me an occasion to practice mercy like you are merciful to me
  • Kids — Thank you for teaching me how to love by sacrificing so much for them, so that I may learn a little bit about your fatherhood:
  • Health — That I can see, hear, speak feel, walk, breathe, think
  • Crosses — Helped to conform me ever more to Christ
• We’re called always to be filled with gratitude.
• Often, however, let’s face it, we complain. We focus on what we don’t have, rather than what we do. The advertising culture concentrates on stimulating our desires for all types of things that we can begin to think that we’re deprived, that our happiness will come not from the blessings that we’ve already received, but by acquiring what we don’t have. This is the work of the devil. It’s the reason why coveting is forbidden in two commandments. It’s the reason why envy is one of the seven capital sins.
• But for us to become truly grateful people, it’s not enough that we don’t take God’s blessings for granted. It’s not enough that we come to thank him for all his blessings.
  • That’s an incredibly important thing to do — and when we pray we should do, along with praising God for who he is and loving him because he’s eminently lovable, before we ask for forgiveness or ask him for what we or others need.
• But what we need to do, if we’re truly grateful, is respond to the blessings God has given. Rather than taking them for granted, he wants us to take advantage of them. Rather than focusing on what we don’t have, he wants us to focus on what we do and use what we have for him and for others.
  • Catholic faith — to live by it, to nourish it, to respond to his help for it to grow in us and in the world
  • Baptism — to keep myself in the beauty of my baptismal state
  • Gift of Mass — To come to Mass, grateful, every day if I can, and to adore the gift of Jesus in the Eucharist as often and as well as I can.
  • Confession — to come to receive this incredible help to my salvation as soon as I need it.
  • Your holy Word — To read the Bible, to get to know God, and to live by it.
  • Holy Spirit — To give the Holy Spirit permission to “blow wherever he wills” in my life, to light me on fire
  • Life — To give it for others
  • Talents — to use them not for myself but for the kingdom
  • Mother and father who gave me life — To honor them, to pray for them, to try to make them proud, to care for them as they age, to forgive them
  • Brothers and sisters — to sacrifice for them and try to urge them on toward God’s eternal family
  • Job — to bring our gratitude for a job to work, to serve God and others, rather than just punch a time card and get a pay check.
  • Vocation — To correspond to it
  • Parish — To get involved, to be as generous as we possibly can in the collection, to do all that I can not just to preserve it but to make it grow
  • Spouse — To focus on the good in the other rather than the habits that annoy, to express gratitude for the little things, to recognize you’re not worthy of the other, to forgive.
  • Kids — To delight in them, to recognize they are always a gift, even during the terrible 2’s or the teenage rebellion:
  • Health — To use the health, like Peter’s mother-in-law, to love the Lord and serve others.
  • Cross — by embracing it like St. Paul. Even though he was in jail, like we see in the second reading today, he was thanking God. He endured everything for the sake of the chosen ones, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, and he knew that his crosses were part not only of his salvation but of theirs, and so he was grateful. It’s the same way with our crosses.
• Preface dialogue:
  • Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God.
  • It is right to give Him thanks and praise!
  • We do well always and everywhere to give God thanks.
• The word Eucharist, as you know, is literally “thanksgiving.” This is where we learn to be grateful people. The Lord has done far more for us than he ever did for the ten lepers. This is the way, par excellence, we thank him – by responding to his invitation who has “eagerly desired to eat this Passover meal with him” and commanded us to “do this in memory of me”.

The readings for today’s Mass were: