The 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time, October 9, 2022

Luke 17, 11–19

As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem, he traveled 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 Lord’s final journey to Jerusalem and the events there make up about half of each of the four Gospels.  During the journey we see the Lord acting in a commanding fashion, as a king.  This whets the appetites of his followers, who expect him to proclaim himself as the king of Israel when he reaches the city.  What they fail to see is that the Lord Jesus is not commanding people in the matters that kings normally would, but as one who possesses true authority and power: he does not command people gather weapons or to serve him in some capacity or other as to benefit himself, but in ways that are to their benefit.

“Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!” Now, these lepers call on Jesus as a “teacher”, not as “Lord”, which tells us they do not know much about him.  These lepers live outside of a Samaritan town to which the Lord has not gone nor has he sent his Apostles there.  They presumably have heard of him only from the crowd accompanying him.  There are ten of these lepers, a significant number.  “Go show yourselves to the priests.”  That is, the Lord indicates that they will be healed but does not heal them right away.  He does this in order to teach them and the crowd both about faith and about his power.  “As they were going they were cleansed.”  The ten were out of sight when they were healed.  They had trudged ahead of the crowd, probably away from the road, wondering what would become of them.  The fact that they went and did not demand to be cured on the spot tells us there was some faith there.  The cure performed by the Lord shows great power.  It is in fact a revelation.  He had cured a few others without being present before, such as in the case of the centurion and his slave.  But this sign of power on the way to Jerusalem must have deeply awed the crowd and furthered their anticipation that some great event would take place in Jerusalem.  The cure of these ten shows the extent of their faith, too, for on the other occasions when the Lord had healed in this way he had praised the faith of the person requesting the healing.

“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.”  True faith, though, begets gratitude.  The ten had sufficient faith to make the request but only one had enough faith to draw him back to the Lord to give him thanks.  Another way to look at this is that the ten lepers called him “Teacher” but did not acknowledge him as “Lord” when he revealed himself to them as Lord, except for the one, and “he was a Samaritan”.  This was a sign of the rejection of the Jews when they understood that he was not the king they were looking for: “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19, 15), preferring a foreign dictator to a Savior of souls.  It would be the Samaritans and the Gentiles who would fills the ranks of the Church more than the Jews: “I say to you that the kingdom of God shall be taken from you and shall be given to a nation yielding the fruits thereof” (Matthew 22, 43).  

“Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine?”  This was a second sign of his power, which would have amazed the crowd: the Lord knew that the ten had been cleansed.  This type of knowledge signified divinity, as St. Bartholomew knew very well: “Where have you known  me? Jesus answered and said to him: Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. Nathanael answered him and said: Rabbi: You are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel” (John 1, 48-49).

“Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?”  The Jews considered the Samaritans “foreigners” because even though they worshipped the same God as the Jews, they were not of the twelve tribes.  Jesus uses the word ironically here to make a point: following him is not a matter of biological heritage but a matter of faith.  St, Paul will teach on this at length in his Letters.  The Samaritan who learned of the Lord’s divinity through his healing and cast himself at his feet in acknowledgment of this fact, is now told to “stand up and go; your faith has saved you.”  The Greek word translated here as “go” has the sense of “travel” and “journey”, so we can understand the Lord as inviting this man to go with him into Jerusalem, where he will still need to show himself to the high priest in order to be certified as cured of leprosy.  

Let us pray that we will one day hear words similar to those the Samaritan heard: “Your faith has saved you!”