GOSPEL: Lk: 17:11-19
Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini broadcast on Vatican Radio.
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Gospel LK 17:11-19
As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem,
he travelled 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."
THE GOSPEL OF THE LORD: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ
Kieran's summary . . . . We are all lepers in the sense that we are distorted and incomplete. There is no such thing as a human being who feels completely whole or "normal". There are issues that eat away at each of us from within and cry out for resolution. There is a tendency for human beings to become preoccupied with their own particular problems. We tend to think that if this or that particular issue was resolved then we would be whole and complete. This is the trap that nine out of ten lepers fall into! Nine of the lepers are healed of their illness and then go on their way, thinking that all is hunky-dory. Only one of the lepers realizes that health is not everything. He wishes to praise his God and maintain a relationship with the Lord who saves him. Our lives instead are filled with the idolatrous tendency to believe that physical wellbeing is everything. We seek this wellbeing incessantly and end up developing a superficial attitude towards the things that really count in life. But health is not everything! It is better to be physically infirm with a heart that praises God than to be physically sound with a heart that has gone astray.
Just like the leper, each one of us has something that distorts us and excludes us from society. All of us are imperfect, in need of healing, with a leprosy that eats away at us from within.
This passage gives us an insight into what true salvation consists in. The leper in the Old Testament was a solitary figure who was systematically excluded from the community. He had to remain outside of human society. In all of our lives there are things that make us different from others; there are things that cause us to be excluded; there are things that cause us to suffer and feel like outsiders. None of us feels one hundred percent "normal". Indeed the notion of a normal human being is an idol that doesn't exist in reality! No-one encounters "normal" men and women in everyday life. All of us are a little bit distorted and we come to God to ask for healing for this imperfection in our nature. How true this is of the leper in the physical sense! The leper is someone who sees his own flesh being consumed by decay. In all of us there is something that is eating away at us from within. There is something that limits us and pains us. We all have need of healing from God.
There is an idolatrous human tendency to think that salvation is equivalent to the resolution of the particular problem that consumes all of my attention
We often encounter people in desperate situations. It might be a state of economic hardship or it might be an existential issue. But whatever it is, the person often becomes consumed with that issue and is unable to think of anything else. That pain that they are experiencing becomes the fulcrum of their being. There is often a tendency to think that if that particular problem were to be resolved, then everything else would be ok. There is a tendency to believe that all of life depends on the resolution of that issue. This is the trap that nine lepers out of ten fall into. In the parable, nine of the lepers think that they have arrived at "salvation" once they obtain the healing of their illness. Jesus gave them an order and they followed his instructions admirably. Jesus tells them to go and present themselves to the priest even before they are healed. They do as they are told, following the instructions of their doctor, taking the medicine prescribed, and they find that they are made whole again. For nine out of ten of the lepers, this is sufficient for them. The story is over as far as they are concerned. But the story is not over at all in reality! It is not enough that I obtain healing for my bodily infirmities. There is an idolatrous tendency of the human heart to base his existence on things like human health. This parable challenges the axiomatic human principle that claims that "health is everything." Health is possessed by many people who do terrible things! If some of the dictators of history enjoyed less good health then maybe they would have done less harm to other people. Bad health places limits on people and maybe if some of these tyrants had grave health problems they might have shown greater respect and tolerance for others. Health is a state that we idolize, but it is nothing more than the state of potentially doing good.
Health is not equivalent to salvation. It is better to be physically infirm with a heart that praises God than be physically sound but have lost our way in life
The leper who returns to thank Jesus realizes that health is not everything. It is not sufficient for him that he has been healed. He wishes to maintain a relationship with the Lord. He returns to praise his God, sensing the invisible in that which has happened to him. Jesus says to him, "Go, your faith has saved you". Salvation is the one thing that counts. We encounter many people who are healthy in body but who have completely lost their way in life. All of us, to some extent, are healthy in body but lacking in more important ways, with a body that is relatively sound but a heart that is dead. On the other hand, we often meet people with severe physical limitations but whose hearts are full of love for God.
A focus on wellbeing gives us a superficial perspective on salvation. Do we wish to be healthy or to be saved? Are we looking for the physical health that lasts only temporarily or real life that endures eternally?
What is it that we are really looking for in life? When we celebrate the Eucharist this Sunday, do we wish for our lives to be truly sorted out on the deepest level? When we raise our children, are we concerned primarily with their physical health? Do we work for their eternal salvation? In many cases they have already grown up before we start to become concerned about their relationship with God. Our preoccupation with the "wellbeing" of ourselves and our children makes us incapable of developing profound relationships with God and others. A focus on wellbeing can make us superficial in a devastating way. That is why it is often periods of illness that prompt us to finally open our hearts and discover the deeper meaning of salvation. What is it that really counts? To be healed or to be saved? To be physically healthy or to have praise in our hearts for everything in life, even periods of sickness? What is it that really matters? To live for God in every moment of or lives, or to try to resolve our problems ourselves? Sometimes we are so focussed on life's problems that we do not learn what it means to truly possess real life.
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