Thanksgiving for the Kindness and Generous Love of God, 32nd Wednesday (II), November 11, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Wednesday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Martin of Tours
November 11, 2020
Ti 3:1-7, Ps 23, Lk 17:11-19

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• “In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess 5:18), we sang as we prepared for today’s Gospel. Our Christian vocation is one of continuous thanksgiving in all circumstances. We have a beautiful dialogue in the heart of every Mass when the priest says, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God,” the people reply, “It is right and just” and the priest adds, “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father.” We pray those words on Easter Sunday but also throughout Lent, we pray them and nuptial Masses as well as funerals, we pray them in the midst of prosperity and persecution. It is right and just always and everywhere, in all circumstances, to praise and thank God. To do so is first a religious duty, out of gratitude to God for all that he has given us and done for us. But it’s also the path to our salvation. We see the salvific importance of thanksgiving in today’s Gospel.
• Jesus today heals ten lepers. To have leprosy in the ancient world was about the worst thing that could befall you. Not only would Hansen’s disease eat away your flesh and bones, not only would it lead to about the most sickening smell imaginable, but it would lead to your total banishment from society. You had to live apart from civilization. You were cut off from your family. You were cut off from simple things like being able to go to the market for groceries or to the well for water. In some sense you were cut off from God because you couldn’t go to the synagogue on Saturdays or the Temple for major feasts. People couldn’t approach closer than 50 feet from you and when you were near anyone you needed to ring a bell and cry out “Unclean! Unclean!” One of the toughest things of being a leper was that the only people with whom you could relate were other lepers, with all the psychological, physical and spiritual problems that lepers bore.
• When Jesus approached, the lepers with diaphragms trained from yelling out “Unclean! Unclean!,” stood at a distance from Jesus, raised their voice, and begged, “Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!” Very few people had genuine mercy on them. They just tried to stay as far away from them as possible, as if the leprosy were somehow the lepers’ fault. Jesus did have mercy. He responded, “Go, show yourselves to the priests,” because priests were the only ones under the Mosaic law who were able, intelligently, to pronounce a leper healed and to return him or her to society. Even to say this was to imply that he had cured them, but he actually didn’t pronounce them cured. It took an act of faith on their part to start journeying to find a priest simply on Jesus’ word. But that’s what they did. As they were journeying, however, St. Luke tells us one of them, a Samaritan, realizing he had been healed, turned around. Before he would show himself to the priests, he wanted to thank the one who had given him a miracle. Glorifying God, he came to Jesus, fell at his feet, and poured out his heart in gratitude. Jesus’ words are very powerful: “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine?” He knew he had cured all ten of leprosy, but only one was showing gratitude. Jesus then drew attention to the fact that the man who returned was a Samaritan, someone for whom the Jews had centuries of animosity as those who did not worship God aright. “Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?” What he was really implying was, “Where are the Jews?” Where are those who are accustomed to pray,“Give thanks to the Lord who is good, whose love endures forever!” (Ps 107:1; Ps 118:1); who chant, “With my whole being I sing endless praise to you. O Lord, my God, forever will I give you thanks” (Ps 30:13); who declare, “We thank you, God, we give thanks; we call upon your name, declare your wonderful deeds” (Ps 75:2). None returned. And the reason why it mattered so much to Jesus was not because he was a jealous insecure egomaniac who wanted people to appreciate his generosity and enter into his debt. No, he wanted to give them all a far greater gift than curing them of their leprosy! He wanted to give them, through faith, the gift of salvation. He wanted to enter into a relationship with them that would lead them to the eternal cure of all physical and spiritual ills. And it was only the grateful Samaritan who received this gift. Jesus turned to the healed leper at his feet who was still thanking and glorifying God and said to him, “Stand up and go. Your faith has saved you!” Gratitude is essential to receive this gift of salvation through faith because it’s gratitude that opens us up to the Giver of salvation. God wants to give this gift to all but we need to be ready to receive it. In order for us to do so we have to appreciate it and all God is seeking to do. It was only the grateful Samaritan who had this genuine openness through gratitude.
• We have an even greater reason or gratitude than the men in the Gospel, because we’ve been healed by God of the spiritual leprosy of sin and reconciled to God and to each other. St. Paul writes to Titus and the Church of Crete in today’s first reading, “We ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, deluded, slaves to various desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful ourselves and hating one another. But,” — and what a but this is! — “when the kindness and generous love of God our savior appeared, not because of any righteous deeds we had done but because of his mercy, he saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life.” How much we ought to be filled with this spirit of gratitude to God the Father for this kind and generous love, for this mercy, for this rebirth and renewal, for this justification by grace, for the inheritance of eternal life, for Jesus and the Holy Spirit! The second part of this passage is what the Church chooses for the epistle on Christmas Day at the Mass at dawn, as we celebrate how in the Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, the “kindness and generous love of God our Savior appeared” in the flesh. Because that God-with-us and G0d-saves (the names “Emmanuel” and “Jesus” respectively) is still with us saving us, can we ever cease thanking God?
• The fact is, however, that many times we’re not grateful. Not only do we not give God thanks and praise at all times and in every circumstance but often we give the opposite: we complain. Rather than expressing gratitude for what we have, we murmur about what we don’t have. Rather than remembering all of the deeds of the Lord, we treat him with a spirit of “What have you done for me lately?” We can become spiritually spoiled brats rather than grateful, trusting, loving children. And if Jesus could say of the healed Jewish lepers, “Where are the other nine?,” how much more could he say that about us Christians, who have received far more blessings in the new and eternal Covenant than our Jewish elder brothers and sisters in the old Covenant. Jesus could say, “Where are the other nine?” with regard to Sunday Mass, which is the greatest form of thanksgiving (as the Greek word Eucharist means). Jesus could say, “Where are the other nine?” with regard to the Sacrament of his Mercy that restores us to the way to salvation. Jesus could say, “Where are the other nine?” about Sacred Scripture, which bathes us in the cleansing, saving power of his word. Jesus could say, “Where are the other nine?” with regard to the Cross he gives us so as to help us go the way of the grain of wheat and bear fruit and to make us humble and small enough to enter through the eye of the needle into life. But often we don’t thank him as we should because we obsess about what we think we lack rather than are grateful for all that we have received. That’s why today’s Responsorial Psalm is so important. I think it points to one of the most important aspects in all Christian spirituality. We pray, “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.” That “want” means “lack.” With the Lord as our shepherd, we lack nothing; we have it all! If we really believe this, all of life changes. We begin to see that the things we don’t have in life really aren’t important because the Lord is our treasure and as long as we have him, we’re the richest and most blessed people on the planet. The Lord is the one who gives us repose, who leads us, who refreshes us, who guides us in right paths, who accompanies us in dark valleys, who gives us courage, who spreads the table before us, who anoints us, who makes it possible for us to dwell with him forever. Because of this truth of the Lord’s shepherding love and unending pastoral care, we should never cease thanking the Lord. Because it is his will to be with us in all circumstances, that’s why it’s his will for us in all circumstances to give thanks.
• Someone marked by a spirit of thanksgiving for the way the way the kindness and generous love of God the Savior appeared to him, to save him and renew him, to justify him by grace and make him an heir to eternal life is the saint we celebrate today. St. Martin of Tours was the son of a pagan army officer and was brought into the Roman army as a teenager. His conversion story is famous. He was stationed to Amiens in the north of France and was on patrol duty one frigid night when he saw a shivering, lightly clad man begging for alms near the city gate. Martin was shocked that no one was giving this man assistance. Unlike the lepers, he couldn’t even cry out. Martin had no money on him; all he had was his horse, his armor and his own clothes. But he dismounted, took out his Roman lance, and cut his military cappa in two, covering the beggar with half and wearing the other half himself. Later that night, Jesus appeared to him in a dream dressed in the half of the cape given to the beggar, teaching Martin that whenever he cared for, whenever he served, anyone else, he was caring for Christ himself. He was a catechumen at this point but immediately sought and received baptism. Knowing that he could not fully live the Gospel and live by the principles of the Roman army at the time, he soon after he left the army, put himself under the charge of St. Hilary of Poitiers and began a life of prayer as a hermit, which is how he lived for more than a decade, lifting up praise and thanksgiving to God, as well as contrition, intercession and petition. In 371, the Christians of Tours demanded him to be ordained their bishop. There his faith grew as he cared for the various spiritual and physical maladies of the age. He fought ferociously against the paganism of the territory and against heresies in Christianity. He traveled throughout his enormous diocese by foot, on a donkey or by boat. Even when it was clear that his ascetical life, age and hard work were catching up with him, he kept going on. There was  controversy in the parish of Candes because of disputes among priests and he wanted to visit to help remove the sin from their midst. Those around him tried to prevent him, saying he would likely die on the way. He turned to the Lord and said, “Lord, if your people still need me, I am ready for the task. Your will be done.” He knew the Lord was his shepherd and that he had all he needed. He went and reconciled the priests and people. He knew the end was near and informed them that he was about to die. As he lay on his death bed, they wanted to turn him around to prevent bedsores, but he said, “Allow me to look to heaven rather than at earth, so that my spirit may set on the right course when the time comes for me to go on my journey to the Lord.” He was constantly interiorly attuned to the appearance of the Savior, to the Good Shepherd, and with thanksgiving in advance for the journey he knew the Lord was about to ask of him, he kept in a vigil of both soul and body.
• That interior attitude of turning to the Lord in grateful vigil is the spirituality we should take to Mass and to the liturgy of life. As we enter now into the greatest act of thanksgiving, the very liturgy founded by Christ so that we might give thanks to God, we recall that Jesus even on the night he was betrayed took bread and wine into his hands, thanked God the Father, changed them into himself and gave them to himself. To enter into the Mass is to enter into Jesus’ thanks. This is God’s will for us in Christ Jesus.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download