Let us begin by calling on the Holy Spirit to enliven us:
Come, Holy Spirit! Come, Holy Spirit!
As you know, last week we had a visiting priest, Father Elias, who came from Columbus to celebrate the Eucharist for us in Father Tom’s absence. Unfortunately, I was unable to be here Saturday evening to assist him due to a prior commitment. So I made sure that arrangements were made to have someone meet Father Elias, get him into the house and the church, that everything would be set up and ready for Mass, and that someone could see to his needs following Mass on Saturday evening.
I called him a couple days before he came so I could introduce myself, and to let him know that I would only be available to assist him on Sunday morning, and that he would be well taken care of when he arrived. “Oh, Deacon, thank you so much for your hospitality,” he said. “That is so kind of you to do that.” On Sunday morning when I met him before Mass, he said, “Thank you for having everything ready for Mass last night. When I go to visit other places, not much is ready when I get there. Thank you so much.” After his weekend here, he called us to thank us again for everything, and then he called the people who took care of him following Mass on Saturday evening to thank them.
Now I don’t think that Father Elias was just saying “Thank You” to be nice and proper. I believe he was very sincere in his gratitude to all of those who helped him out while he was here. That’s why he called back specifically to say “Thank You.” Well, as it turns out, giving thanks is what the theme of these readings today are all about: gratitude for God’s salvation, and how it should be expressed.
In both the first reading from the Second Book of Kings and the Gospel passage from Luke, we hear of two separate foreigners—in the Old Testament reading, Naaman, a Syrian, and in the Gospel, a Samaritan—who were both healed of their leprosy.
Now, it’s unfortunate that we don’t hear the context, or background of the story of Naaman in the first reading, because it really helps to make sense of what happens here. Naaman is a general in the Syrian army; so he is not an Israelite. In fact, he was known for his military success in his campaigns against Israel. At any rate, he contracted leprosy, a deadly skin disease for which there was no cure. His wife’s maid, a young Israelite girl captured during a raid, informed them that there was a prophet in Israel who could cure leprosy. So Naaman sent a message to the King of Israel asking him to be cured of his leprosy. “And when the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, ‘Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy?’” (2 Kgs 5:7). What does that imply? That only God can cure leprosy.
Naaman eventually came to the prophet Elisha’s house with his whole retinue of horses and chariots, but Elisha didn’t even come out to meet him. Instead, he sent a servant out to Naaman to tell him to wash seven times in the Jordan River, and he would become clean. Naaman was insulted by this; he expected the prophet to come out and perform some elaborate ritual or maybe perform a miracle, and he was ready to turn away and leave. But Naaman’s servant advised him, “My father, if the prophet had commanded you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much rather, then, when he says to you, ‘Wash and be clean’?” (2 Kgs 5:13). So Naaman went down to the Jordan River. That’s where today’s first reading begins.
So what we see in these readings are people who are afflicted with a life-threatening disease. They seek out a man of God to help them. Naaman goes to the prophet Elisha, and the 10 lepers in the Gospel go to Jesus and cry out, “Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!” And after they do as they are commanded, they are healed of their leprosy. But these readings today aren’t so much about the miraculous healing of lepers as it is the conversion of foreigners, their gratitude, and worship of the one true God.
Notice what Naaman does after he realizes he is cured. He returns to Elisha wanting to offer gifts to him in thankfulness. But Elisha refused, because he knew that it was God, and not himself, that was the source of the healing. So Naaman asks to take Israelite soil back to his own land so he could build an altar on top of it, to offer sacrifice only to the Lord, and no longer to the pagan gods of Syria. He wanted to worship the one true God.
In the same way, in our Gospel reading it was the foreign leper, the Samaritan, who returned to Jesus after realizing he had been cured. It says that “he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him.” The Greek word for this is eucharisteō. He returned to worship Jesus. But unlike Elisha, Jesus doesn’t refuse the worship of the Samaritan. He accepts the honor given him. This is really important for us to grasp. Who is the only one who can cure leprosy? Only God. The one true God.
Now, most of us don’t have physical leprosy, but all of us have spiritual leprosy, because we are all sinners. And we know that sin is both contagious and deadly. So what do we do to be cured of spiritual leprosy? We go to a priest, aware of our condition, and ask to be healed. This is why Jesus told the 10 lepers “Go show yourselves to the priests.” Because one of the primary obligations of priests in Jesus’ time wasn’t just to offer sacrifice in the Temple, but to make judgments about whether a person was clean or unclean, to be able to participate in public worship after making a sacrifice, or “penance.” So we go to the priest, confess our sins, and after our “Act of Contrition,” the priest, with the authority given to him by Jesus (who is God), declares us clean by saying, “I absolve you of your sins.”
And so, like Naaman and the Samaritan, we return to God to offer our thanksgiving, our eucharisteō. Our proper response for having been healed first through the Sacrament of Baptism, and then over and over again through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, is eager gratitude through worship.
When we come to Mass, it isn’t just to listen to the Word of God and to receive the Body of Christ in Holy Communion. It’s to offer our thanksgiving to God for having given himself to us completely in the person of Jesus, who sacrificed himself to save us from sin and death. That’s what the word Eucharist means: “Thanksgiving.” And the Mass is our highest expression of thanks and gratitude for what God has done in our lives. Out of love, he gave himself to us completely, and he continues to give himself to us in Holy Communion. In the Mass, it’s only fitting that we give ourselves back to him.
May we all see ourselves in this grateful Samaritan, who was cleansed and came back to glorify God and give thanks to Jesus.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.