Wednesday of Week 32 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 17:11-19

This story of Jesus’ compassion is unique to Luke. We are told that Jesus was travelling on the borders of Galilee, the northern province of Palestine, and Samaria, which lies between Galilee and the southern province of Judea. Jesus is making for the Jordan valley on his way south to Jericho, one of his last stops before reaching his final destination in Jerusalem.

Just as he entered a village he was met by ten lepers (it does not specify whether they were men or women). As lepers they were not allowed to come in close proximity with other people. This was because it was (rightly) known that the condition could be transmitted to others by physical contact—though we know now it needed to be fairly prolonged contact. (Remember how the famous Fr Damien, the Apostle to the Lepers, eventually contracted the disease through his ministering to a colony of lepers on the island of Molokai in Hawaii.)

Because of their dreaded disease, such people were outcasts, condemned to live their lives on the fringes of society. The tragedy is that, given the limited medical knowledge of the times, many such people were almost certainly not suffering from leprosy at all, but from some other non-contagious, perhaps chronic skin disease.

So, calling Jesus from a safe distance, they cried out:

Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!

Jesus simply told them to go and show themselves to the priests. And, while they were on their way, they were all cured. Presumably they continued on their way to see the priests who would give them an official declaration of being ‘clean’ so that they could once again legitimately return to life in society. A major element of their healing was their re-integration into society.

Just one of the cured lepers then came back to Jesus “praising God with a loud voice”, and in deep gratitude fell at the feet of Jesus:

And he was a Samaritan.

These words are loaded with meaning, for it is presumed that the rest were Jews. In the first place, Jews and Samaritans could not stand each other, and the Jews tended to look down on the Samaritans as ungodly and unclean. But in the misfortune of their leprosy, these Jews and Samaritans, rejected by both their own peoples, found common support in each other’s company.

But now that they are cured, only one of them comes to say thanks and he is still—in the eyes of the Jews—an outcast. Jesus, looking around at the Jews in his company, expresses surprise:

Were not ten made clean? So where are the other nine?

The only one to come back and give thanks was a despised foreigner.

This unexpected action is also reflected in another of Luke’s stories, which we reflected on earlier, that of the so-called ‘good Samaritan’. Today, in this Gospel reading is another good Samaritan. And, of course, there is a third—the Samaritan woman who is featured prominently in John’s Gospel (John 4:4-42).

To the man in today’s Gospel, Jesus says:

Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.

That “get up” or ‘rise up’, which Jesus often uses with those he heals, has echoes of resurrection and entry into new life—a life of wholeness brought about by the man’s trust in Jesus and his acknowledgment of the source of his healing.

In the context of Luke’s Gospel, the story prepares us for developments in the growth of the early Church, described in Luke’s Acts of the Apostles. This is because, as the early Christians (all of them Jews) flee from persecution in Jerusalem, the people of Samaria are among the first to accept Jesus as Lord and to become followers of the gospel. On the other hand, many of the Jews in Jerusalem remained closed to Jesus’ message and call.

We, too, must never give in to a temptation to exclude any people as possible followers of Christ. We must be ready to reach out to all, even the most unlikely. None must be treated as outsiders or untouchables, even those who show themselves extremely hostile to the gospel.

And while there may not be any real lepers in our own society, today is an occasion for us to reflect on who could be regarded as lepers, outsiders, outcasts and untouchables among us at the present time. I might also consider whether I personally treat any person as an outsider in my home, in my work or in other places where I meet people. Such exclusion is totally contrary to what we celebrate in the Eucharist.

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Wednesday of Week 32 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Titus 3:1-7

Today, our third and last reading from the Letter to Titus consists of some general instruction for church members. The living of a full Christian life touches not only on our direct relations with God but also permeates even the smallest actions of our day and the role we play in the everyday world.

It is not right for us to make a division between what is ‘religious’ and what is ‘secular’ in our lives. Christianity, as a vision of life, touches everything. We live, as the Jesuit philosopher theologian Teilhard de Chardin put it, “in a milieu divin”: everything around us is touched by God.

Today’s Letter urges the Christian community to obey government officials and representatives. As ‘citizens of heaven’ (see Phil 3:20), some of the early Christians had problems about this, and it seems to be reflected in the scene where Jesus is asked whether it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not.

The answer is ‘Yes’ to both: give to God what belongs to God and to Caesar what belongs to Caesar (the ruling authorities). Although believers are indeed ‘citizens of heaven’, they should also submit themselves to the moral and legitimate demands of an earthly government and co-operate actively in promoting the well-being of the community.

Of course, everything belongs to God and that is the bottom line. But we also love and serve God when we work with conscientious people in promoting the overall well-being of the community (including the responsible paying of taxes). In fact, we have a Christian duty to do so. For Christians to abdicate their responsibilities to the wider community and lock themselves into an isolated ghetto would not be consistent with the love we are asked to have for all.

At the same time, we need to adopt what Cardinal Jaime Sin of Manila once described as “critical cooperation” with any government or its officials. All forms of injustice and corrupt use of power must be resisted and denounced. Obedience here would be tantamount to cooperation. As has been said, for evil to prevail all that is needed is that good people remain silent.

Some of the other pieces of advice Paul gives Titus are fairly general:

• to be obedient, to be ready for every good work,
• to speak evil of no one [even if true],
• to avoid quarreling,
• to be gentle,
• to show every courtesy to everyone.

This is “love your neighbour” being carried out in practice and the advice is as relevant as it ever was. Sometimes we are not very different from non-Christians in this area.

The Christians are reminded that there was a time, before they became Christian, when their own behaviour left much to be desired, when they shared many of the vices of their fellow-Cretans:

…we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, despicable, hating one another.

At that time, they still lived in an atmosphere of wickedness and hostility, full of hate for others and quite obnoxious themselves.

Perhaps we could look into our own lives and see if any of these things are in ourselves:

• Ignorance in the content and meaning of our Christian faith: How many Christians, especially Catholics, have very little familiarity with the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments? How many could, if asked by a non-Christian, give a coherent and persuasive account of what Christianity really is?
• Disobedience, in the sense of lacking in real respect for authority, both in civil and church society: Obedience does not mean subservience; it means working together with civil and religious leaders for the well-being of all. And, as we mentioned, that working together may mean at times challenging and calling in question—but not copping out.
• Slaves to various passions and pleasures: We live today in a very materialist, consumerist and hedonistic society. It has become a kind of fashion to live in this way. But, as we see again and again, pleasure is not a real source of happiness; it is often quite the contrary. As Christians we need to be able to show a viable alternative where happiness is to be found in other ways of living.
• Hating and being hateful: Many people’s lives are consumed by hatred, resentment, anger and even violence towards others. Such people are not attractive and can only really find company in others equally full of hate and rancour. At the bottom of such feelings there is fear. In the New Testament, the opposite of love is not hatred, it is fear. And true love casts out fear; these states of being are incompatible.

Let us then try to be more loving people, allowing God’s love to work in us and through us so that the deep-down fear gradually seeps away.

In the second half of the reading, we are reminded that all that God has done for us in Jesus Christ was in no way a kind of reward for our faithfulness to him. We have been saved and liberated for no other reason than the deep compassion that God had for us when we were still immersed in our sin. Our liberation came, rather:

…when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared…he saved us…not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy…

The word “loving” here translates the Greek philanthropia, that is, love for all mankind.

We were washed clean by the waters of Baptism and made a new person in the power of God’s Spirit working in and through us:

This Spirit he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

We have been made right with God by a purely gratuitous display of his love. We have now become the Father’s heirs, sharing with Jesus our Brother and Lord life without end. To remain in that state, it is up to us to remain totally open to God’s love and allow him to transform us to become daily more like him in all our words, actions and relationships.

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