2 Kings 5:14-17, 2 Timothy 2:8-13, Luke 17:11-19
“He fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. ”
For this 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, the Church offers Luke’s account of Jesus healing the ten lepers as an echo of the evocative story of the healing of the Syrian Naaman. It is not insignificant that this episode takes place when Christ is going up to Jerusalem to offer His life. It helps us to understand the profound meaning of all the miracles performed by the Savior, most of which involve physical healings: the blind, the lame, the deaf and dumb, the bedridden and crippled, even the dead…
Man comes back to life through trust in God
Through this connection, highlighted only by the physician Luke, we understand that the miracle of physical healing is, in depth, a sign of the inner healing that sinful man receives from the Cross!
Healings, like sacraments, both conceal and reveal man’s return to grace. We think in particular of the healing of the paralytic, during which Jesus, exceptionally, proceeds to forgive sins before healing the body.
This return to grace is generally described as an entry into faith, as today’s pericope indicates: “Go, your faith has saved you.” True healing of man occurs when he, entering into trust, at the same time enters into the Heart of the Father, like one of those children to whom the Kingdom is reserved.
“Grace is given to those who give thanks.”
This is the full meaning of the miracle: the gift of divine Life at the heart of human life. By restoring the miracle to its full meaning, we are able to discover the many, if not all, miraculous healings that God has performed in our lives. We must then remember the countless times that Christ has returned us to the Father by breathing into us His filial Spirit, a gentle and humble spirit, a trusting and abandoned spirit: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
To remember is to give thanks: “I will give thanks to you, for you have acted…” (Ps. 51); giving thanks is hoping once again for grace upon oneself: “… And I hope in Your Name, for it is good…” continues Psalm 51. Yes, as the Imitation of Jesus Christ says: “Grace is given to those who give thanks!”
This is why the evangelist concludes the pericope with this challenge from Christ, which must have been vivid: “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? They did not return to give glory to God!” The Savior does not demand what is due to Him; He only weeps over these men who so easily, and I dare say foolishly, pass by the Life that desires only to give itself in abundance!
“What do you want Me to do for you?”
Miraculous actions are all the more important in the life of Jesus because they are like the prototype and source of the sacraments of the Church, at least in the healing aspect that they all possess. The sacraments are the means instituted by Christ to perpetuate His own saving actions. This is especially true of Reconciliation.
And if we have any difficulty identifying the healings through which God has given us a deeper faith in Him, let us analyze how, that is, with what real desire for healing, we approach the sacraments through which God continues to work miracles in our hearts. Let us look, for example, at what our request is when He comes to us in the sacrament of Reconciliation and asks us, as He asked the blind man of Jericho: “What do you want Me to do for you?”
The sacramental life is a life of miraculous healing…
The sacramental life is the life of one that goes from healing to healing through healings that never end… With each healing, our faith is strengthened and we feel ever more inclined to give thanks by throwing ourselves at the feet of the Master like the sinful woman with her ointments and her hair…
Our faith will become that of the saints once we understand, joyfully, that the victory offered by Christ is to share in His reign, that is, to serve both the Father and men: the Father in the sacred Liturgy that gives us life, and men in the living Charity received from this Liturgy, which can be called paschal because it allows us to move from self-centeredness to gift, from a crippled existence to pro-existence, to offered existence…
From ecstasy to exodus from oneself…
This is the promise that Paul makes to Timothy in the second reading: “If we persevere, we shall also reign with Him.” With Him, that is, through the grace He lavishes on us miraculously and unceasingly, we will endure this ex-tase, that is, literally, this departure from ourselves, or even this permanent decentering of ourselves, and even this continual self-exodus that causes us to suffer, so much do we cling to ourselves…
However, this forgetfulness of self is necesary to be able keep our loins girded, to kneel before our brothers to zqsh their feet and thus to give them the consolation of the Father of consolations.
It is this good that we ask for unceasingly in the Collect: “May your grace, O Lord, we pray, at all times go before us and follow after and make us always determined to carry out good works.”
Happy Sunday, dear friends!
