Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. He was going there in order to be crucified; in order to die for our sins, and then three days later to rise for our justification (cf. Rm 4:25). The straight route from Galilee to Jerusalem lay through Samaria, but it seems that Jesus planned to skirt around this territory. From St. John’s Gospel we know that at least once, under pressure of haste, Jesus had ventured into the territory of the Samaritans. But John reminds us how remarkable this was, because, as he says, “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans” (Jn 4:9). When St. Luke first announces the final journey to Jerusalem, he tells us that Jesus sent his disciples ahead to make an initial trial via Samaria. But the Samaritans refused to receive them (9:53). According to the historian Josephus, round about this time a party of pilgrim Jews en route to Jerusalem was massacred by Samaritans. So the parable of the Good Samaritan is especially powerful, in that such great and gratuitous generosity from such a man would be so unexpected and surprising.
As Jesus entered a village in the border-lands, ten lepers, standing well back as they legally had to, shouted to him for mercy. Jesus seems to have responded to their cry almost as if it were a distraction. Apparently he did not even give them his full attention. But he gave them an order, with such commanding authority that they all simply obeyed. And as they went, they found they were made clean.
We are familiar with the idea that leprosy can symbolise not only abject human misery, but also exclusion, and separation from the worshipping community, and ultimately sin. In Chapter 5 of St. Luke’s Gospel all that is in play. A leper boldly comes to Jesus, who with solemn deliberation reaches out and touches him. By that contact, because of who he is, Jesus is not made unclean, but the leper is made clean.
St. Luke has no need to reiterate that point in this story of the ten lepers. Instead, all his attention here is directed to their response, or lack of it. Somehow, although the nine were healed, they did not truly benefit from their healing. For the physical healing was only a sign, a pointer, to the more radical healing Jesus came to give: healing from sin, and from its effect, which is separation from God, and death, both of body and soul. What supremely matters in our lives then is a living faith in Jesus, and a right relationship with God through him. Compared to that, whether we are sick or well, or whether our life is long or short, is of quite limited and relative importance.
The contrast of response between the nine Jewish lepers and the one Samaritan would not have been lost on St. Luke’s original audience. They were in the first place gentile Christians. They knew they were outsiders, like the Samaritan. Astonishingly, and undeservedly, they had been allowed to come into the inheritance of Israel, through their faith in Jesus. And all around them they saw Jews, who should have known better, who precisely refused this faith, and indeed were actively hostile to it.
Two thousand years on from that, we who read the story know ourselves also to be undeserving recipients of grace beyond measure. To borrow St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians: we who were sinners have been washed clean, we have been sanctified, we have been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus (cf. 1 Cor 6:11).
Nowadays we are rightly very disinclined to compare ourselves favourably with the Jewish people, or indeed with anyone at all. But we do note how still only a tiny minority of those touched by Jesus return to give him thanks: and often those who do so are the most unlikely or unexpected people. But without gratitude we cannot live in right relationship with God. That’s why Jesus praises the Samaritan in today’s Gospel, because it’s good and necessary for us to follow his example, and to fall at Jesus’ feet in praise and thanksgiving.
Robert Cardinal Sarah has recently published another book. The title of this one is: The day is now far spent. Through it, rather unconventionally but quite effectively, he is doing his job as Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship . Here, we don’t find the Prefect insisting on the proper observance of this or that liturgical law. Instead, he cries out to us from his heart: we have to worship God! We have to give God glory! God has to be at the centre of our lives! We have to recognise our dependence on God, and come into his presence in the profound humility that befits us as creatures and as forgiven sinners!
The trouble is, especially here in the West, this imperative has been all but forgotten. Therefore we have a crisis, not only in the world, but in the Church too, because she has been very widely infected by worldly thinking and attitudes. Cardinal Sarah dares to say openly that even Catholics, even Priests and Bishops forget to give God the primacy, and they fall into thinking of the Church as one more human project. Once again in this latest book, he points his readers towards monasteries as islands of sanity and of hope. The monastery exists to give God worship. The monk as it were dwells permanently at the feet of Jesus. There he not only continually offers thanks for all the great gifts of grace received, but he continually receives new gifts and graces. Come then, says Sarah, to the monasteries! “Here mind and heart can breathe; here the virtues are fostered; here the soul can turn to God in a very concrete way”. Of course the Cardinal does not fail to mention also for example the heroic witness today of faithful Christian parents. Often they have to endure ridicule or worse, as they try to bring up their children in the love and fear of God, and in resistance to atheistic and inhuman ideologies.
Jesus cleansed the ten lepers as if distractedly. But he did not cleanse us distractedly. He gave himself up completely for us, enduring the mockery, the blows, the scourging, the crown of thorns, the nails, and the spear, in order that our sins might be washed away in his blood. This offering of Jesus to us and to his Father happens also at every holy Mass. Supremely then at Mass we have the opportunity to fall at Jesus’ feet, to praise and thank God for all his gifts, and to have those gifts confirmed and strengthened and renewed.