Healing and the Kingdom

Homily
TWENTY-EIGHTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR (C)
14 OCTOBER 2007

2 Kings 5: 14 - 17

[2 Ki 5:14] So Naaman went down and plunged into the Jordan seven times at the word of the man of God. His flesh became again like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.
[2 Ki 5:15] He returned with his whole retinue to the man of God. On his arrival he stood before him and said, "Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except in Israel. Please accept a gift from your servant."
[2 Ki 5:16] "As the LORD lives whom I serve, I will not take it," Elisha replied; and despite Naaman's urging, he still refused.
[2 Ki 5:17] Naaman said: "If you will not accept, please let me, your servant, have two mule-loads of earth, for I will no longer offer holocaust or sacrifice to any other god except to the LORD.

2 Timothy 2: 8 - 13

[2 Tim 2:8] Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David: such is my gospel,
[2 Tim 2:9] for which I am suffering, even to the point of chains, like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained.
[2 Tim 2:10] Therefore, I bear with everything for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, together with eternal glory.
[2 Tim 2:11] This saying is trustworthy: If we have died with him we shall also live with him;
[2 Tim 2:12] if we persevere we shall also reign with him. But if we deny him he will deny us.
[2 Tim 2:13] If we are unfaithful he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.

Luke 17: 11 - 19

[Luke 17:11] As he continued his journey to Jerusalem, he traveled through Samaria and Galilee.
[Luke 17:12] As he was entering a village, ten lepers met (him). They stood at a distance from him
[Luke 17:13] and raised their voice, saying, "Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!"
[Luke 17:14] And when he saw them, he said, "Go show yourselves to the priests." As they were going they were cleansed.
[Luke 17:15] And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice;
[Luke 17:16] and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan.
[Luke 17:17] Jesus said in reply, "Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine?
[Luke 17:18] Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?"
[Luke 17:19] Then he said to him, "Stand up and go; your faith has saved you."
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Today's Gospel relates how ten lepers were healed from their leprosy, and only one returned to Jesus to give thanks. The significance of the Gospel is far more profound than the gratitude of the one and the want of thanksgiving of the other nine. Jesus is using the healing of the ten lepers as one of His many signs of the advent of the Kingdom of God on earth. The one that returned to Jesus, giving thanks to God, received far more than the other nine. All ten received a temporal healing from a loathsome and (in those times) an incurable disease. To the one who returned to give thanks, however, Our Lord gave much more. He did not say "you faith has cured you"; rather, He said "your faith has saved you".

Today's first reading tells of the healing from leprosy that the Lord had given Naaman through the ministry of Elisha. That healing was a harbinger of the fullness of the Kingdom which would accompany Our Lord's first coming. Centuries after this event, the healings that Our Lord gave the ten lepers were more than a harbinger of the Kingdom--the Kingdom was already upon them. The one to receive the effects of that nascent Kingdom was the Samaritan who returned to Jesus to give thanks to God--an act of faith by which Jesus healed him from the leprosy of sin. That it was a foreigner who returned to give thanks and thereby receive the greater gift is symbolic of the fact that the forthcoming salvation to be won by Jesus is intended to apply to the entire human race.

The primary purpose of Jesus' first coming, then, was not that people should receive healing from disease or other temporal evils. The primary purpose was to be the salvation of all mankind. The healings and deliverances performed by Jesus were used as effective signs of the imminence of that salvation.

Ten lepers were healed that day. However, there were many other lepers in that region and throughout the world that did not receive a healing from their leprosy on that day. Jesus, as God, knew each of them by name--however, only those ten who had immediate access to Jesus received the healing. What Jesus was preparing was a means for men anywhere in the world to have access to Him to receive the spiritual healing from sin that Jesus would win for them, by His passion, death, resurrection, ascension. He would do this by His sending the Holy Spirit into the world as the forgiveness of sins.

The old law prescribed that lepers keep their distance from others. The ten lepers "stood at a distance" from Jesus, raised their voices, and begged Him to have pity on them. His reply to them was that they "show themselves to the priests", again in keeping with the old law. While they were on their way, they were cleansed ot their leprosy.

In the present dispensation, men anywhere in the world afflicted with the leprosy of sin do not have to stand afar off and call to Jesus for mercy. Each can now approach close to Jesus and say as did the lepers: "Jesus, Master--have pity on me!" Jesus answers this prayer through His gift of the Holy Spirit. Sins are forgiven, and the Divine Life is re-established or strengthened as sinners are justified. To this end, the Holy Spirit works either through ordinary or extraordinary means. He works through ordinary means in the sacrament of reconciliation. He also works through extraordinary means, by inspiring the sinner to make an act of perfect contrition. For a Catholic, such an act of contrition must include an intention to confess his sins at the earliest opportunity.

Recalling the great importance Jesus attached to the Samaritan's expression of gratitude for the healing of his calamitous disease, we do well to make our first act, upon leaving the confessional, an act of profound thanksgiving to the merciful Triune God. We give gratitude to Our Eternal Father for having sent His only beloved Son into the world. We give thanks to Jesus for having won for us the victory over sin by having become its expiation. We give thanks to the Holy Spirit for Himself being, as the Church calls Him, the "Forgiveness of sins".

We should include in our thanksgiving all our spiritual benefactors, through whose intercessory prayers each of receives the actual grace to make a good confession. In so doing, we remember our greatest benefactor, the Blessed Virgin Mary. She constantly responds to our petition each time we recite a "Hail Mary" by praying for us now, at this present moment, and in so doing fills us with confidence that her efficacious intercession will be applied in full force at the "hour of our death".

Some of you present today might not have made a confession for quite a while. There are as many reasons for this as there are persons involved. For some it might be habit, for others it might be embarrassment, and for yet others it might be a kind of "pride of wickedness" whereby one comes to think of his sins as being so great that expecting forgiveness would be a kind of presumption.

Two things must be kept in mind. First, a person dying with just one unconfessed, unforgiven mortal sin on his soul will be separated from the presence of God for all eternity. His eternal lament will be, "how easy it would have been for it to be otherwise". For such a person to persist in staying away from confession is the greatest folly of which man is capable. To quote Padre Pio speaking to such a person, "run--don't walk to confession".

The second thing to keep in mind is that the mercy of God is infinite. This can be grasped by meditating as follows: if all the sins of all mankind from Eden to the consummation of the world, with all their execrable heinousness, were rolled up into one seething mass of iniquity, that mass would be utterly annihilated when plunged into the ocean of God's mercy. To make that plunge, each sinner is called by the Lord, over and over again as he makes his way through this, the wayfaring state: "Repent--for the Kingdom is at hand".