Wednesday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time
In today’s Gospel, Jesus encounters ten men afflicted with leprosy. Desperate for healing, and recognizing Jesus’ power and authority, they cry out to Him. Jesus has mercy on all of them, yet only one returns to worship Him. What are we to make of this powerful encounter and how do we apply it to our lives today? Worship is our response to the God who heals and saves. And far from a singular response, let us determine today to order our very lives toward and in the One who created us for a life of Beatitude and makes that life possible through the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ our Healer and Redeemer.
As our Gospel story unfolds, the ten lepers address Jesus as “Master.” This title could also be translated, “Teacher.” It’s a term that denotes ownership, the one fully in charge, the person with supreme authority. In Jesus, these desperate ones recognize not just any teacher or leader, but the Teacher and Master, their Teacher and Master, their Lord. It’s a worshipful address.
Jesus directs them to an ordered response, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” Leprosy is a highly contagious skin disease. At that time, long before antibiotics, the only way to avoid communal spread was to isolate the infected individuals. Lepers were forbidden to gather and have social contact with other people, and that included worship. What a terrible burden to bear! In Jesus’ day, leprosy was not only a public health issue, but it was also a religious issue, as well. The Jewish ritual Law contained multiple prescriptions around leprosy and other skin issues. So, Jesus sends these individuals, so desperately in need of healing, to the priests, and “As they were going they were cleansed.” We must see ourselves in these afflicted individuals. We, too, are in desperate need to be healed, to be set free from the burden of our sins, to be saved.
“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.” Notice the act of worship performed by this single individual. He recognizes Christ’s saving work, returns to Jesus (return = repent), wholeheartedly glorifies God, falls prostrate before his Master/Lord, and offers thanksgiving. Calling to mind our sins, repentance, glorifying God, kneeling before the Lord, and offering thanksgiving . . . echoes of what we do in every Mass! What if you and I were to approach every Mass with the attitude of this one leper? What if we were to prepare our hearts to enter church overcome with gratitude to God for having healed and saved us? 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. What if that were us each and every time we come to worship? We have been healed! We have been saved! We have been set free from the burden of our sin!
More than our weekly worship, our very lives are to be ordered toward God in worship. God has created us for Beatitude in Him, not only in the life to come, but in every moment of our earthly lives. Imagine your life as a trajectory, with every aspect of that grand sweep aligned, ordered, established in God. God created us for blessedness, happiness in Him. God invites us lovingly, mercifully, and graciously to attach ourselves completely and faithfully to Him, receiving the abundance of divine love and offering it back to Him. When we sin, we establish disordered attachments that pull us away from God, derail us from the blessed trajectory, and make us fundamentally unhappy. A life ordered toward and in God in worship is characterized by continual repentance and conversion, glorifying God with one’s life, bowing one’s life before the Lord, and living in continual thanksgiving.
Ultimately, we are a Eucharistic people. We gather every week to offer “true thanks” and to be fed at the Lord’s Table. God pours out Eucharistic grace in order that we might have the strength and help that we need to order our lives toward and in Him. I’m so grateful that we aren’t left to our own frailty and feeble efforts to live faithful, worshipful lives. Thanks be to God that, “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness” (2 Peter 1:3). Let us gratefully order ourselves in and toward God today, confident in the grace and strength He lovingly pours out. Thanks be to God!
-Elizabeth Wells