“Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?”
At the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer, the priest, with hands extended, says, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God” The people respond, “It is right and just.”[i] Justice is the constant and permanent determination to give everyone his or her rightful due.[ii] “Justice leads us to render to each one what is his due. But when it is a question of justice to God, we can never succeed in giving Him all that we owe Him, in making Him a suitable return for all His gifts, in paying Him the worship and homage which are due His infinite Majesty. We can fulfill our obligations to other according to justice, but we cannot do so with regard to God. However much man does, it will always be far less than what justice demands.”[iii] God is due the praise and thanks of His creation. In the Gospel, it is only one of the ten that return to give Jesus thanks and praise. In the story of the ten lepers, one is a Gentile and the other nine are Jews. It is only the Gentile that returns back to Jesus and gives Jesus the thanks and praise that He is due.
What prevents the nine lepers from thanking and praising Jesus? What prevents us from thanking and praising Jesus? The nine Jews did not recognize Jesus. They did not realize what was right before them. “Jesus, to their minds, is a mere disciple of Moses, a bare instrument of favors, holding His commission from Sinai, and as soon as they have gone through the legal formality of their purification they take it that all their obligations to God are paid. We can often treat Jesus and His Church as an instrument of favors. Do we, for example, thank Christ for the many graces we receive in the Sacraments, He instituted and has entrusted to the Church? We can sometimes get wrapped up in the routine of our obligation and fulfill the obligation without thanks and praise. We can also, sometimes, feel privileged that we have a right, which perhaps we deserve. We should be reminded constantly of the words that we pray prior to receiving our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, “Lord, I am not worthy
that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”[iv] We ask Jesus, as the lepers did to “have pity on us”. When we ask this, are we just asking for favors, or are we asking that our hearts might be filled with gratitude enabling us to accept whatever Jesus gives and to thank and praise Him regardless of whether we receive a favor or not?
What was it that enabled the one leper, the Gentile to return and thank and praise Jesus? “The Samaritan, the despised Gentile, whose sufferings have given him that humility which makes the sinner clear-sighted, is the only one who recognizes God by His divine works, and gives Him thanks for His favors.”[v] Give some examples of how humiliation and suffering can bring a person to recognize Jesus. Why is it that humility and suffering, even being the one whom is despised, helps us recognize Jesus? Could it be that we recognize those who are like us? Jesus was humbled. At the Mass the priest prays, “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity?”[vi] Jesus suffered through His passion and death. Jesus was despised. More often we recognize Christ crucified, more than Christ resurrected because we have not yet been resurrected, but we often, in life, are humiliated, suffer and despised. “One of the fruits of today’s Gospel is that of awakening in us a great horror of sin, of arousing again in our souls a lively and efficacious repentance for the sins we have committed and a feeling of profound humility upon recognizing our misery.”[vii]
“Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.”[viii] All can say with their mouth, “Take pity on me,” but only the humble can say this with their heart. Jesus did not turn away any of the lepers, not due to their race, not due to their disease. Jesus truly is the God whom all can approach. We approach, we receive, but do we come back?
Why is it that people would not come back to Jesus?
When is a time when you would have liked to say thank you to someone but did not have the chance or did not take the time?
ACTIVITY – Thank You Rosary
Use the rosary, and move from bead to bead saying one thing you are thankful for on each bead. We can thank God from our hearts, as Saint Augustine does in the Spiritual Reading, for whatever comes to mind. This act of gratitude is pleasing to God.
How do you feel when you do something for someone and they do not thank you? Many times we become discouraged when we are not thanked, not praised for the work that we do. We can become accustomed to basing the success of our work, or even our life, on the feedback we get from others. We have to remember that Jesus, the Son of God, who was sinless and perfect only had one person out of ten, come back to thank Him. If we judged Jesus on statistics, He was not very successful. His success rate in the miracle of the Gospel today is only 10%. His success rate of loyalty from his 12 closest friends is even lower, only 1 of the 12, Saint John, followed Him all the way to the Cross. This is only 8%. We cannot become discouraged with numbers, and we also cannot expect that everyone that we have an impact on will come back with great gratitude and thank us. We can almost become prideful in that we expect those we have helped to come back and thank us. This pride manifests itself when we become hurt or even hold a grudge when we are not shown gratitude. We will never know the thanks that people hold in their hearts, whether it is silent or expressed, it is very often this not knowing that keeps us humble.
[i] The Order of the Mass I
[ii] Fr. John Hardon, S.J.; Modern Catholic Dictionary; page 301
[iii] Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D; Divine Intimacy, page 841
[iv] The Communion Rite; The Order of the Mass I
[v] Abbot Gueranger, OSB; The Liturgical Year; Book 11, page 318
[vi] The Liturgy of the Eucharist, The Order of the Mass I
[vii] Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D; Divine Intimacy, page 838
[viii] Blaise Pascal