Thank You!

 I was just a boy back at the time of the last big polio epidemic in the U.S. in the early 1950s.  People then were frightened by a dangerous disease, against which they felt defenseless. When asked what he remembered about those days, Doctor Albert Sabin (the scientist who developed the second polio vaccine) remarked: “the fear! You never lost sight of the human side of what you were doing. You were driven by the knowledge that there was human misery. … Thousands of people were crippled and dying.” No wonder vaccines are among the modern world’s greatest blessings!

When we recall the fear of polio in that not-so-long-ago world without vaccines and in the present whenever some new plague presents itself – think of our own recent experience with the covid pandemic before that vaccine became available – it becomes easy to understand how frightened and threatened ancient peoples felt faced with the mysterious illness they called leprosy. Those afflicted with it were often segregated, according to the Law, outside cities and towns (as was done from 1866 to 1969 in Hawaii). Indeed, we often see sick people as a threat – or at least a source of discomfort – to be avoided by those seen as healthy and normal.

In fact, what the ancients called “leprosy” was often a curable skin condition – hence the Law’s provision of a procedure for examination by the priests, But until one had been examined and certified as cured, the leper was considered impure and unclean. Cut off from normal social life, the lot of the leper was a hard one. Suddenly, into all this misery, moved Jesus [Luke 17:11-19] – for whom the fact that the sick were  treated as aliens in their own land did not detract from their significance in his sight. Indeed, as Pope Leo has just reminded us in his recent Apostolic Exhortation “On Love for the Poor,” from Jesus’ own behavior, “the Church understands that caring for the sick … is an important part of her mission” [Dilexi Te, 49].

All the lepers said was, “Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!” The sick don’t need to say much. They can communicate quite effectively just by who they are. Desperation often makes for hope. Often the only thing a desperate person may have left is hope.

So, when they got the command to go and show themselves to the priests, they went immediately. And, suddenly we are told, they were cleaned. Meanwhile, one of them, realizing what had happened, returned to thank Jesus. Presumably, the other nine continued on to Jerusalem as Jesus had directed. But this 10th leper was a Samaritan. Disease had brought together 10 people who would not normally have associated with each other. Once they had been healed, however, once the barrier that united them by separating them from the society of the healthy had been breached, then the normal social barrier between Samaritans and Jews reappeared – barriers between people which Jesus in his own place and time broke down by his behavior, which we, in our place and time, must likewise challenge.

Perhaps the Samaritan could have found himself a Samaritan priest in Samaria. Maybe he did that anyway when he finally returned home. Once healed, however, something special had happened to him through his experience of Jeses,, something so special it changed his whole outlook on life. He returned, glorifying God in a loud voice, fell at the feet of Jesus, and thanked him. Seeing he had been healed, his world expanded (like that of another famous foreign leper, Naaman, who found new faith and returned to Elisha to give thanks [2 Kings 5:14-17]). The Samaritan recognized not only what had happened but why. And the why was Jesus. Leper no longer, he was still a Samaritan; but he was no longer an outsider in relation to God. And so he responded with faith and thanksgiving.

Gratitude is the first fruit of faith. It’s our response to the God who (as Paul said to Timothy [2 Timothy 2:8-13]) always remains faithful. Giving thanks is what it actually means to live as a Christian. It’s an awareness – made individual and personal in each one’s own experience of God’s particular kindness to one – an awareness that God’s power to save is greater than all the obstacles we put in his way.

And that is why the Eucharist (a word which literally means thanksgiving) stands at the very center of our Christian life. Our thanksgiving finds its center in the Eucharist, because that is where we find Jesus, our one and only healer and savior. Through him, with him, and in him, we give thanks to God the Father for all that he has been for us and done for us. But true gratitude cannot be confined to one hour each week – any more than the Samaritan’s gratitude could authentically end in one single emotional scene.

So, after he had been healed, Naaman, that earlier foreigner, took some of Israel home with him, so that, wherever he went in the world, he would be able to worship the Lord on the Lord’s own land. We are here today, as every Sunday, to celebrate the thanksgiving that stands as the very center of our lives as the Lord’s grateful people. As for Naaman, so for us, the question is: what will we take home from here to continue our thanks – today, tomorrow, and every day?

Homily for the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, October 12, 2025.