Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), Vigil
October 12, 2019
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us this Sunday.
- In the Gospel, Jesus will heal ten lepers of the dreadful disease of leprosy, but he had a far greater miracle in mind. Just as when Elisha heals Naaman the Syrian in the first reading, he received a greater gift: the recognition that 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 Lord wanted to work a similar two-part miracle in the Gospel. All ten lepers were cured of a disease that had been eating away their flesh and bones, that had made them stink, that had made them the worst of outcasts and forced them to stay at least 50 feet away from any non-leper. It had compelled them at all times to yell out “unclean!, unclean!,” anytime someone was approaching. It had cut them off from their family members. It had 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. But at their cry for mercy, Jesus healed them all and sent them to the priests to verify that the disease had stopped growing and they were no longer contagious. As they were on their way, they were completely cured.
- After recognizing that the miracle for which they had prayed and long 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 give him a thank you note, but so that he might grant them something even greater than a stupendous physical cure. He wanted to give them all what he gave one Samaritan who returned: the grace of salvation by faith. After the healed man fell down at his feet to thank him with all his heart, 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 heal 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 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 fact that he was a Samaritan prompted Jesus to ask, “Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?.” The other nine lepers were presumably Jews. Jesus was shocked 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. 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.
- The other nine likely looked at their disease with anger toward God, as if they 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 box of chocolates to the one who had held them in captivity. The Samarian, however, 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. 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, offer ourselves even more profoundly to a life-changing relationship with the Divine Giver? Or do we behave like the nine other lepers? Some Catholics are known by their friends and family for their gratitude. Others would complain about the menu at the Last Supper. For them, the beach is too sunny and the water is too wet. They grumble about what they don’t have, rather than rejoice with appreciation at what they 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 days we’re attending funerals of loved ones, on days when we get promotions and bonuses at work and days we get pink slips, on days when we win and on days that 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 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).
- The Greek term from which we derive the word “Eucharist” means “thanksgiving.” It’s always stopped me in my tracks that right before Jesus said the words of consecration on the vigil of his crucifixion, he took bread and, as we’ll hear anew on Sunday, “gave thanks.” He gave thanks because he was constantly thanking the Father. 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. No matter what hardships we’re enduring or problems we’re facing, God comes into our world to heal us, to help us, to save us. And so we say, “Deo gratias!,” “Thanks be to God!,” for it is truly right, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give God thanks and praise! Amen!
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