Ordinary Time 28th Sun C

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Reading 1  2 Kgs 5:14-17
Responsorial Psalm  Ps 98:1, 2-3, 3-4
Reading 2  2 Tm 2:8-13
Gospel  Lk 17:11-19

            It is incredibly easy to take things for granted, to assume that the goods we are given are all basic necessities that we are owed. This is especially true of the things we receive from God: the natural gifts of our being itself, and the world and all other things he has created for us out of his love. This can even be true of the clearly supernatural gifts that he gives us: the grace that allows us to live holy and upright lives in spite of the tendency towards sin lodged into our nature by the sin of Adam. It can even be true of the clearly miraculous works that he does, as is shown in the Gospel.
 
            Our Gospel presents 10 lepers, 9 who take for granted the healing that Jesus gives them, and one who receives his healing as a grace that transforms his existence. Upon seeing Jesus travelling along the border of Samaria and Galilee, heading towards Jerusalem, the 10 lepers ask for him to take pity on them, for him to have mercy on them, a request we make at every Mass and constantly throughout our lives. Jesus simply tells them to show themselves to the priests, a requirement for reintegration into society if one had been a leper but could demonstrate that one was no longer a leper. While on their way to do this, the 10 lepers are all miraculously healed. Undoubtedly, they all noticed this, and must have connected it to Jesus’ choice to show pity on their condition. Nevertheless, only one of the 10 does not take it for granted, and instead puts together that what cured them was not a man-made magic trick, but a grace given by God: a grace possible only because Jesus Christ is God. Whereas the 9 other now-former lepers continue on their way to show the priests they are clean and get on with their lives, this now-former leper, a Samaritan: a semi-pagan living in the land of the former Northern Kingdom of Israel that had been destroyed by the Assyrians more than 700 years earlier, comes back to Jesus to give praise to God.
 
            In spite of his former rejection of the God of Israel, and especially of the sacrifices offered at the temple in Jerusalem, being cured by Jesus has given him faith to recognize not just the God of Israel, but also his Incarnate Son: God-made-flesh, by whose power he was cured. As Jesus tells him, his faith has saved him: through his faith, he has been aggregated to the new People of God, to the Body of Christ that is crucified in Jerusalem and offered as a perfect sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. This doesn’t happen just because Jesus had pity on his leprous body, but rather because of the grace of faith that he accepts in light of that cure.
 
            A similar story is told in the first reading. Elisha, a prophet working in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the same land later inhabited by the Samaritans, had been visited by Naaman, an army commander for the nearby Arameans, who was also a leper and had heard that you could find miracles in Israel. Elisha, after hearing of his condition, sent him a messenger to tell him to bathe seven times in the River Jordan, at the end of which, his flesh will be clean. After some convincing by one of his servants, Naaman had initially rejected the simple, mundane task of bathing as something he could have done in Aram, Naaman goes through with it and does become clean, just as Elisha told him he would. He then returns to Elisha not just out of a personal gratitude for what Elisha had done for him and to give Elisha a gift, but also to tell Elisha that he had recognized the one God: the God of Israel, and would only offer sacrifices to Him for the rest of his days. Like the Samaritan leper, the Aramean army commander and leper Naaman, uses his cure as an opportunity to receive and cooperate with the grace of God. He receives the true faith, although not yet at its fulfillment in Christ.
 
            In both of these cases, the individual gratitude that Naaman and the Samaritan feel by not taking the grace that heals them for granted opens them up to a further grace: that of faith. The cure of their leprosy gives them the grace of the virtue of religion: the virtue by which, though recognizing we cannot fully give God what we owe Him, we give Him all that we can. It is the virtue that leads us to offer sacrifices to God, to offer our whole being to God. It is a virtue fundamentally rooted in gratitude, in recognizing the good things God has done for us. In making sure that we do not take for granted what God does for us.
 
            I assume that no one in this church has been cured of leprosy. Nevertheless, we are always in the presence of the supernatural world, and cannot help but see clear tracks from God’s direct action of sustaining both the Church and the world. On this very altar, the sacrifice of Christ, offered for all of our sins and to make communion with God possible, will be offered in a few minutes and is offered every day. The same sacrifice first offered on Calvary 2000 years ago, in which God heals us by forgiving our sins, and heals the world by bringing salvation to it. The same sacrifice that was anticipated in the foreigner Naaman recognizing the God of Israel, and the semi-pagan Samaritan recognizing Jesus as having the power of God.
 
            In participating in this sacrifice, we are offered a chance to give thanksgiving to God, to praise Him and adore Him for the mercy he has shown us by forgiving our sins, and we ask for his intercession in our needs, we ask Him to have pity on us, as he did on Naaman and the 10 lepers. Through this participation, we receive grace and are invited to strengthen our faith, to cooperate with the grace of faith that is given to us by God. Like Naaman and the Samaritan, we are invited to not take what God gives us for granted, but instead to turn towards God in praise and adoration, strengthening our faith.
 
Through the Eucharist, which means thanksgiving, we find the highest expression of the virtue of religion, of offering ourselves to God in Christ: we participate in his sacrifice and give thanks to Him for it. Here, we can fulfill the positive part of the saying St. Paul tells us we can rely on: we die with Christ, so that we can live with him. We hold firm to Him, so we will reign with Him. If we take this seriously, it cannot help but impact the rest of our lives, and help us to live in His presence.