Wednesday in the 32nd Week of Ordinary Time, November 11, 2020

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 voice, 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.”

A little bit of news here: one of the priests with whom I live came into contact with a person who was not feeling well and who has since then tested positive for COVID.  Father Kelly informed me this afternoon that he and I are now quarantined to our house for the next two weeks, while the other priest cannot leave his room.  I feel all right at the moment but I will probably get tested as a precaution.  But this will result in some changes to parish life for the next fourteen days, including the cancellation of Bible Study meetings during this time.  It is unfortunate, but hopefully we will ride this out with our health intact and then get back to business.  In the meantime, I ask for your prayers. 

“As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him.”  We can imagine the scene: ten men in various stages of this dread, disfiguring and ultimately crippling disease, cry out to the Lord from a prescribed distance.  The smell of the sores and decaying flesh would have proven nauseating, and the sight would have been appalling.  These ten men would have lived together outside the village in a squalid camp.  They would have begged for their food and more often than not have gone to sleep on the hard ground still hungry.  The sounds of their sufferings would have carried into the town, perhaps with their stench as well.  The road on which the lepers met the Lord was a well-traveled one used by pilgrims making their way to and from Jerusalem.

“Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!”  The Greek text literally says that the leprous men “lifted up their voices” and said this.  The cries must have sounded pitiful.  Luke says they called Jesus “master” or “teacher”.  We might wonder how they knew who he was.  Possibly they had called to one of the crowd following the Lord and he had called back that it was Jesus.  We might also wonder what exactly they were begging him to do for them.  Were they asking for food or money?  Or did they know that he had the power to cure them?  The Lord knows what he will do, whatever it is they want.  He calls back to them: “Go show yourselves to the priests.”  This probably confused them at first.  He does not set down food or money for them to fetch after he has departed, nor does he say any prayers or pronounce any blessings.  The lack of drama here is itself dramatic, as the situation of the lepers seems to remain unresolved.  The lepers probably stood and waited for some other command, some other words, but none came.  Did the Lord watch them go, or did he turn back to the road and resume his journey?

The lepers were left with these words, and to their credit, they also walk, parallel to the road, to the priests, presumably in Jerusalem.  This would have made for a considerable journey for men as sick and frail as these, and they carried no provisions.  Some of the group may have grumbled and resisted making the trip but were prevailed upon by the others.  At any rate, they go, and they go quickly enough that they disappear from the sight of Jesus and the others who were present.  At least some of the group were excited by the prospect before them.  According to the law of Moses (as found in Leviticus 14) one who was healed of leprosy underwent a complex ritual conducted by a priest over the course of eight days outside a city.  The priest, let it be noted, did not heal the leper; the ritual was one of sanctification and cleansing following the healing that had taken place.  The ten leprous men who encountered the Lord Jesus still suffered from their disease at the time they went their way, and they showed a certain faith in this.

“As they were going they were cleansed.”  No thunder from the sky, no swelling orchestra, no heroic words.  The men were cleansed as they went their way.  How did they notice?  Now, disease often creeps up on us so slowly that we do not notice its symptoms: a cough here, a scratch there, a little loss of appetite.  Did the lepers feel their limbs strengthened, their breath coming easier, the smell vanishing?  At some point they stopped, looked at themselves, looked at each other, and knew the truth: they were cured.

“And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice.”  This jubilant man hurried back, rejoicing in his new freedom and good health.  He could hardly believe what had happened, but he did, and he shouted God’s praises at the top of his voice.  His life had been given back to him.  “He fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him.”  The cured man knew, when he looked into the eyes of Jesus, that he was looking into the eyes of God, and he fell at the Lord’s feet in absolute gratitude.

St. Luke tells us that the cured man who came back “was a Samaritan”.  This would have been apparent from his clothing and likely from his accent as well.  It would not be surprising that a Samaritan had joined with the other lepers, as the road near which they lived went through Galilee and Samaria.  “Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?”  The Greek word translated here as “foreigner” literally means “a man of another nation”.  Jesus may have used this word ironically in that this man, and not the nine Jews, showed himself to be a true lover of God.  But where are the other nine?  It is easy to think of them celebrating in some tavern.  But we might also think in a different way.  St. Luke tells us that “one of them, realizing he had been healed, etc.”  Did the others not realize they had been healed?  Did it seem impossible to them that they could be healed?  Certainly, they had followed the command Jesus game them to go to the priest.  Did they think the priest would heal them, or that the priest would give them something to eat?  This would more easily explain what Jesus says to the Samaritan at his feet: “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.”  That is, the others did not believe that Jesus could cure them, had cured them, despite the evidence of their senses.  But this other, he did: he possessed real faith.  This would also be in line with the attitude of the Jewish leadership to Jesus: they saw his miracles, but did not believe in him.  They did not believe Jesus had such power.  They twisted themselves into knots explaining away his healings and exorcisms, even claiming that he worked by the power of the devil.  And so it is to the Samaritan, the outsider, signifying the Gentile, to whom the Faith would go.

If we open our eyes, we can see miracles all the time.  They go unannounced, so they often go unnoticed, even by the person to whom they occur.  Let us pray for the grace to see the Lord’s marvelous works, and to believe ever more firmly in him.