ONLY ONE RETURNS TO GIVE THANKS

Homily for November 11^th, 2020: Luke 17: 11-19.

Jesus heals ten lepers. In Jesus’ day leprosy was something like AIDS today. Because the disease was incurable, and thought to be contagious, the leper had to live apart, calling out “Unclean, Unclean!” lest others approach and become infected. So, in healing the ten, Jesus was restoring them from a living death to new life. Yet only one comes back to give thanks for his healing. He was a foreigner, despised by Jesus’ people. If he goes to the Temple, the priest will probably tell him to get lost. He doesn’t belong to the right religion, or the right people. Related ethnically to the Jews, he doesn’t observe the full Jewish Law. Priests in Jesus’ day were also quarantine officials: they could distinguish between the clean and unclean – those admitted to public worship, and those excluded because they were unclean. Only the Samaritan, who lives outside the law, follows the impulse of his heart, returns to Jesus, and gives thanks.  

What about ourselves? Are we grateful people? Do we take time each day to count our blessings, and give thanks to God for them? The Church helps us to be thankful people by placing thanksgiving at the heart of its public prayer. Eucharist, you know, means “thanksgiving.” This Mass -- every Mass -- is a public act of thanksgiving to our heavenly Father for all the blessings he showers upon us. In a few minutes we shall hear once again the familiar story of what Jesus did for us at the Last Supper. “He took bread and gave you thanks .... When supper was ended, he took the cup. Again, he gave you thanks and praise.”

Giving thanks to God over something is the Jewish form of blessing. In giving thanks to his heavenly Father for the bread and wine, Jesus was blessing them. And in so doing he was also transforming them: changing their inner reality into his own body and blood. It is because of this miraculous though unseen change that we genuflect to Jesus present in the tabernacle when we come into church. We ring a bell at the consecration, reminding everyone in the church: Jesus is here, right now, in a special way, with a special intensity! The light burning near the tabernacle, day and night, says the same thing. 

Show me someone who is embittered, angry, filled with resentment and hate -- and I’ll show you a person who has no time for thanksgiving. But show me a person who radiates peace and joy-- and I’ll show you someone who daily and even hourly gives thanks to God for all his blessings. Which of these two persons would you like to be?