Gratitude for God's restoration of our souls.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart

be acceptable in thy sight,

O Lord, my rock, and my redeemer.

The lepers could not approach anyone. They were outcast.

They were relegated to stand on the edge of society and call out for their needs. So, in today’s Gospel message, Jesus is passing between Samaria and the lower regions of Galilee, and he enters a village and is met by these lepers. Now in order to understand what happens here we need to notice a detail. It says that the ten lepers “stood at a distance and lifted up their voices and said, ‘Jesus, have mercy on us.’” Now this description of them standing at a distance presupposes one of the laws of the Old Testament regarding leprosy that can be found in the Old Testament book of Leviticus. So what this passage is imagining is that if someone gets leprosy they would have to live outside of the town—or outside of a village—and that if someone came close to them, they would, as it says, put their hand over their upper lip, in other words, to shout out crying, “Unclean, unclean.” The presupposition here is that they keep their distance. They can only stay within shouting distance of other people so that they don’t contract the disease—or so that they don’t pass the disease to those who are well. It is the biblical equivalent of “Social Distancing.”

In the lesson before us, we have Jesus passing by and these ten lepers are standing at a distance, and they lift of their voices, but instead of crying out, “Unclean, unclean,” as in the Leviticus instructs, instead they say, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” In today’s lesson, we have a dramatic transformation of those that are on the edge of a faith community but now brought into God’s full circle.

This is also my story. Yesterday, God called me to Holy Orders, and Archbishop Kurtz ordained me as a Deacon of the Catholic Church. I have been assigned to service here at this beautiful parish of St. Martin of Tours, and do so with great humility because our parish has been blessed with many holy, and good deacons. And yet, there is more to my story. You see, I am a product of the catechism of this parish…the liturgies, the hours spent in adoration, of deep friendships. I stand in this ambo because of you.

I am what most would call a convert to the faith, though some of you have heard me say that I do not really like that descriptor, since I have been a Christian all of my life. In my heart, I prefer to think of it as I just stop protesting against the Church. About 8 or 9 years ago, I was wandering, searching for a connection with God. As providence would have it, one Sunday, I showed up for Mass and was overwhelmed with the beauty of the liturgy. By the end of the Mass, all I could do was just sit in the pew and cry. You see, I was standing on the outside crying, “Jesus, have mercy on me!” And, like the leper in our lesson, God healed me and made me clean.

But in our Gospel lesson today, there is more going on. What is actually happening? The ten lepers have cried out to Jesus for mercy and they call him Master, or Lord. And so, when he responds to them, Jesus says something interesting. He says, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” Now that’s a bit of an odd response. Why doesn’t Jesus just say, “Be healed”? Or why doesn’t he say, “Come to me,” and touch them and heal them. No, he tells them to go and show themselves to the priests. On their way, as soon as they obey Jesus’ command to act as if they are clean of their leprosy by going show themselves to the priest for an inspection...as they’re on their way, they’re cleansed of leprosy. It disappears. It’s gone, right? And so what happens is one of the ten lepers, who happens to be a Samaritan, realizes that the person he needs to thank for being cleansed is Jesus of Nazareth. So he turns back and he goes to Jesus. Notice what he does. He praises God—literally glorifies God—and gives thanks to Jesus by falling at his feet.

The word that Luke uses to express the thanksgiving is the Greek word, eucharisteo. Quite literally, the Samaritan came back to eucharist God through Jesus. We are likely to forget that “eucharist” is a lively verb of thanksgiving and not only names the “source and summit” of the church’s activity at prayer, but expresses the verbal reality of each and every person here: we “eucharist” or give thanksgiving, both individually, and together. It is not enough to perform the ritual of “showing ourselves to the priest” like the nine lepers, but responding in faith, we give thanks. We are brought into Christ’s everlasting gift of reconciliation.

And this is such a critical point of today’s Gospel lesson: healing is one thing; God’s restoration to those in Christ into the kingdom is another. Think about it for a moment…all who Jesus healed in scripture eventually succumbed to the biological frailties of our bodies. And yet, their restoration into the life of Christ, into the Kingdom, was everlasting…that is the source of our gratitude.

But gratitude is a funny thing, isn’t it? Gratitude cannot be forced or legislated, and notice that Jesus does not hunt down the nine ungrateful lepers to give them a pious lecture on the virtue of thanksgiving. Ideally, gratitude swells from within the human heart in thanksgiving (eucharist) after a encounter and an inspiration, not just a moral correction.

Jesus restores us from our world of meaninglessness into the center of the kingdom and love.

[NEED TO FINISH CONNECTION TO MY TESTIMONY]

Jesus came to bring us back to God by reconciling us with the Father. Like the ten lepers, we stand afar off at the beginning of the Liturgy and cry, “Lord, have mercy!” Are we not tired of being on the outside with God and with one another? Is it not time for us to fall to our knees, and give “eucharist” – thanksgiving to our Lord and Savior?

We have all come here because we seek the one who has invited us, even as Jesus healed the ten lepers. So, here we are. In a few minutes, our Lord, the great physician, our mighty King, will re-present himself on this altar. In a non-bloody way, he will manifest his call to us to healing and reconciliation. Pray that he comes into our hearts so that as we enter the apostolate that is our very lives, we may know what it means to “fall at his feet and give thanks.”

[Bow head]

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to us in this time of prayer. We ask your help to put them into effect. My immaculate Mother, St. Joseph my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for us.

In the name of the father….