Homily for October 10 2004 Year C - Cycle II 28th
Sunday in Ordinary
Time
by Dcn. Tony Porto Topic:
Being Faithful + + +
Gospel:
Luke 17: 11-19 ". . . As Jesus
continued his journey
to
Jerusalem, he traveled through Samaria and Galilee. As he was entering
a village, ten lepers met him. They stood at a distance from him and
raised their voices, saying, 'Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!' And when
he saw them, he said. 'Go show yourselves to the priests.' As they were
going they were cleansed. And one of them, realizing he had been
healed,returned, glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the
feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan. Jesus said in
reply, 'Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has
none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?' Then he said
to him, 'Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.' "
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We
might well
call this “Leper
Sunday.” Both
in the first reading and in the gospel
we meet lepers who are wonderfully cleansed of their dread
disease.
It is the terrible disease of leprosy and
the social stigma that goes with it.
This becomes more real to us in our time as we read and know
persons
afflicted with AIDS, an illness like leprosy for which there is no
cure, other
than a miracle. Medical science is hoping someday to develop a drug
that will
take the place of a miracle.
Speaking
of, there is a story about an elderly and longtime patient asking his
doctor,
“How come you have never mentioned ‘miracle drugs’ in conjunction with
any of
my ills?” The doctor’s response is,
“Miracle drugs won’t help you. Go to
the country, get plenty of rest, eat nutritious foods and smoke only
one cigar
a day.” A month later, the patient
returns in radiant health, saying, “Doctor, your advice is
wonderful.
I rested, ate well and did the other things
you recommended. Smoking that one cigar
a day is something else. It’s nearly
impossible to start smoking at my age.”
The ten lepers we
meet in today’s readings had not one but two strikes against
them. They were not only lepers, they
were foreigners as well. At least we
know for sure that Naaman in the first reading was a Syrian and the one
who
returned to thank Jesus in the gospel was a Samaritan.
The
message we should carry home with us today is not only about God’s
concern for
anyone bearing a loathsome burden. It is also that God helps bring
about the
salvation of anyone who seeks Him out, no matter what apparent
disqualifications for salvation they might appear to have.
We see that God cares about the foreign
leper who in Jewish thinking of those times was the lowest form of
human life
there could be.
Scripture
is telling us today that God cares about and cures the lowest of the
low, i.e.
non-Jewish lepers. It then follows that
none of us can ever claim that our God doesn’t care about us, doesn’t
love us,
or isn’t willing to forgive and save us.
To hammer home the point, we hear Paul tell his friend and
disciple
Timothy in the second readings, “If we are unfaithful, Jesus will still
remain
faithful to us.” We might be amazed to
discover how many Christians there are who think that because they have
been unfaithful
to the Lord and become, as it were, spiritual lepers, that the Lord
will avoid
them, shun them, and refuse to help or forgive them.
Like
Jesus himself, Paul suffered and gave his whole life, after his
conversion, to
bringing the message of God’s love and forgiveness to all men and
women, Jews
and non-Jews alike. As we hear Paul say
today, “I suffer and I preach so that all may obtain the salvation to
be found
in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory.”
Note that he says ALL.
This
then is a second message for us from today’s Scripture.
Just as God used Elisha, Paul and Jesus to
bring health, peace and salvation to the men and women of their day, so
does
God depend upon you and me to bring this missionaries not in far-away
places
but in our own family situations, our offices, and our schools.
But
being a missionary with the message of God’s loving mercy does not mean
making
oneself obnoxious to others or forcing our ideas and feelings on an
unwilling
audience. Rather it means being alert
and sensitive to the spiritual needs of those we encounter. It
means noticing and then seeking to heal
the confusion, emptiness and despair we may see in those with whom we
come in
contact. Lest we forget, we heal best
by our own example.
A
third message we might learn today from the grateful leper is how
wonderful a
Christian quality simple gratitude is.
Gratitude flows from faith, and sometimes even precedes it. More
than one saint has recommended
beginning to give thanks for something we want from the Lord, even
before we
get it.
It
is both the faith that brings salvation and also gratitude that should
prompt
us today to exclaim with Paul, “If we have died with Christ Jesus, we
shall
also live with Him. If we hold out to
the end, we shall also reign with Him.” Amen.