Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, October 8, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Twenty-Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time, C, Vigil
October 8, 2022

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 for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, when we will not only witness 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 gives us an incredible gift like that.
• Ten lepers approached Jesus. He would cure all ten of a disease that had been eating away their flesh and bones, that had made them stink worse than skunks, that had made them outcasts and forced them to stay at least 50 feet away from any non-leper and to cry out “unclean!, unclean!,” anytime someone was approaching. 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. But at their insistent, even courageous, cry for mercy, Jesus healed them all and sent them to the priests, which was the means set up in the Mosaic Law to verify that the disease had stopped growing and they were no longer contagious. The text of St. Luke indicates 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 who had given them this gift. Jesus poignantly asked, “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 thank him, but so that he might give them an even greater gift than their 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 with all his heart, Jesus told him, “Stand up and go. Your faith has saved you!”
• This is a key point: 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. 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 this Sunday’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 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 the Gospel — 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 this Sunday, 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 this Sunday, “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 we say the only worthy thing we can to such incredible generosity: “Thanks be to God!” God bless you!

The Gospel on which the homily was based was: 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download