“Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?”
In today’s gospel we have the cleansing of the 10 lepers. We are told that Jesus entered a village and was met by 10 lepers standing at a distance who cried to him “Jesus, master, have mercy on us.” Moved by kindness and compassion Jesus heals them with his word and as they went to show themselves to the priests they were cleansed of their accursed disease.
In those days leprosy was diagnosed by the priests. In Leviticus, God said to Moses and Aaron that when a person may be leprous he is to be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of the sons the priests for examination. Leprosy was a frightful disease which condemned the sufferer to isolation, ostracism, poverty, humiliation and separation from their religious cultus. You could imagine their joy as they hurried to the priests in seeing their leprous state changing as they became well in body and were healed. You can also imagine the amazement of priests upon being told by the 10 lepers that they were healed, through the mercy of Jesus Christ, by him commanding that it be so.
Mercy is Grace freely given by the Lord. Grace constantly pours forth into creation. We are reminded in the gospel of Matthew that God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust”. In other words, God so loves the world that he continues to sustain it constantly. There is a great lesson in this: in our sinful state, where we put ourselves first, we think that we somehow merit God’s grace in our lives as we want it, or think we want it. We have the temerity to demand of God what we think we need. The problem of course is that we have finite knowledge of this world only. We think ourselves clever in discovering the things in this world and we apply our knowledge and experience from this world to ask from God for things which may not belong to this world. This makes it impossible to know whether or not that what we are asking for may ultimately be to our spiritual detriment for the next world. For after all, this world that we live in should not be considered as our permanent home but as a life to be passed through to the next, of which we are given partial glimpses of in the Gospels.
Every time we celebrate the liturgy we make a most profound petition to our Lord God. At the most sacred part of the liturgy we say “your own from your own we offer you, in every way and for everything”. In other words we acknowledge nothing belongs to us and everything is given by God through Grace.
For the 10 lepers of course, they ask for healing and Christ freely gave it to them. As far as they were concerned they asked and they received. We are not told whether they were evil or good or just or unjust. God’s mercy was freely given to them and they went on their way – or at least 9 did. Only one returned to give thanks and he was a Samaritan and thus a foreigner. His belief earned great praise from the Lord: “rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”
What of the other nine lepers? Did they stop to give thanks? Did they say to themselves something miraculous happened and we should return giving thanks and glory to God for the greatness of his works? Clearly, they got what they most wanted and as soon as they received it they immediately forgot to give thanks. How many of us ask in our prayer for God’s mercy and when we receive it we immediately forget to give thanks. In times of tribulation we run to God – we ask for divine assistance. We ask for the panagia to intercede on our behalf and petition her son to assist in our time of tribulation. We make promises and negotiate with God. If God does this then I will do that. Brothers and sisters, God has no need for negotiation. There is nothing that you can give God because everything belongs to God. Even so, God freely gives to all what is needed for our spiritual life in the world to come.
This is something that we forget. Every day we live in this world is a gift from God. Everything is a gift. Today we are and tomorrow we cease to be. As St Ignatius put it, “Therefore, let us not be ungrateful for his kindness. For if he were to reward us according to our works and we would cease to be”. Let us not forget that what we think we own in this lifetime will pass to someone else once we die. At best we are only stewards of the material things in our possession. We should understand that we will be brought to render account as to our stewardship of the material things in this world in the world to come.
So, what can we learn from this gospel lesson? It occurs to me that the most that we can offer God is ourselves. We can offer ourselves by glorifying and praising his name. Psalm 150 proclaims “praise the Lord!… Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his exceeding greatness?… Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Praise the Lord”. By being grateful to God for his kindness we are acknowledging that there is a greater power at work in our lives then ourselves. This is the start of spiritual growth. Happiness, peace and calmness of the spirit will flow. By putting God first in our lives we begin to put things in perspective – as to what is important and as to what is not. Let us all strive to leave everything in his hands and not our own. Let us all be found worthy for Christ to say to each one of us “rise and go your own way; your faith has made you well”. Amen.