10/08/2022
REFLECTIONS FOR THE 28TH SUNDAY YR C
Fr. Gabriel Wankar
"Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well" (Lk 17: 19).
This Sunday's Gospel presents Jesus healing 10 lepers, of whom only one, a Samaritan and therefore a foreigner, returned to thank him (cf. Lk 17: 11-19). The Lord said to him: "Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well" (Lk 17: 19). This Gospel passage invites us to a twofold reflection. It first evokes two levels of healing: one, more superficial, concerns the body. The other deeper level touches the innermost depths of the person, what the Bible calls "the heart", and from there spreads to the whole of a person's life. Complete and radical healing is "salvation".
By making a distinction between "health" and "salvation", even ordinary language helps us to understand that salvation is far more than health: indeed, it is new, full, and definitive life. Furthermore, Jesus here, as in other circumstances, says the words: "Your faith has made you whole". It is faith that saves human beings, re-establishing them in their profound relationship with God, themselves, and others; and faith is expressed in gratitude.
Those who, like the healed Samaritan, know how to say, "thank you", show that they do not consider everything as their due but as a gift that comes ultimately from God, even when it arrives through men and women or through nature. Faith thus entails the opening of the person to the Lord's grace; it means recognizing that everything is a gift, everything is grace. What a treasure is hidden in two small words: "thank you"!
Jesus healed 10 people sick with leprosy, a disease in those times considered a "contagious impurity" that required ritual cleansing (cf. Lv 14: 1-37). Indeed, the "leprosy" that truly disfigures the human being and society is sin; it is pride and selfishness that spawn indifference, hatred, and violence in the human soul. No one, save God who is Love, can heal this leprosy of the spirit which scars the face of humanity. By opening his heart to God, the person who converts is inwardly healed from evil.
"Repent and believe in the Gospel" (Mk 1: 15). Jesus began his public life with this invitation that continues to resonate in the Church to the point that in her apparitions, the Virgin Most Holy has renewed this appeal, especially in recent times. Today, let us think in particular of Fatima, where over a hundred years ago, 13 October 1917, the Virgin appeared to the three little shepherd children: Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco.
Like the Syrian General Naaman in the first reading, many pilgrims have continued to troop to Fatima to seek cure and answers to their various needs, including conversion of world leaders to the much-desired grace of world peace.
As I mark the end of my ministry here at Our Lady of Mercy, I ask you all to join me in imploring Our Lady for the gift of true conversion for all Christians, so that we may proclaim and witness consistently and faithfully to the perennial message of the Gospel, which points out to humanity the path of authentic peace.
Like the grateful Samaritan L***r, may I thank Fathers Doming, Rey, and our Deacons for the peace I have experienced living with them for close to four years. Above all, I deeply appreciate you, the loving people of OLM for your overwhelming generosity and kindness to me. I experienced undeserved love and peace from you all, for which I remain deeply grateful. I will hold you all close to my heart in prayers. Thank you.
