Often, we appreciate what we have only if we truly know what it would be like to not have it. In today’s readings, we hear the stories of two individuals who suffer from a terrible disease, and then who are miraculously healed of it. This healing fills them with profound gratitude precisely because they know very well what their lives had been like before. As we heard, the malady they suffered from was leprosy, the most feared and hated disease in the ancient world. Leprosy was an incurable skin disease that caused disfiguring sores all throughout the body. Because it was highly contagious, it was more than a disease – it was a social stigma, an illness that made a person unfit to be a member of regular society. Lepers were ostracized because others feared to be near them, and eventually the illness itself became indicative of being unholy. If you had leprosy, God was punishing you because of your sins, and so in addition to being very visibly sick you were also shunned by the rest of society.
Perhaps we can understand then how much it must have meant to be miraculously healed of such a terrible illness. In both the First Reading and again in the Gospel, those who are healed of leprosy are not just restored to full health – they are, in a sense, restored to life itself. They are no longer separated very visibly from the human community by this terrible disease, outcast and unable to participate in the fabric of society. They had been healed, and more than healed – they had been given a second chance at life.
This sense of restoration is deepened if we look specifically at who is healed. In the first reading, Naaman the Syrian is an outsider – in fact, he is the general of the army that is getting ready to attack Israel. But he also suffers from leprosy, and he desires to receive the healing that he’s heard he can receive from the prophets in Israel. Having washed in the waters of the Jordan, as the prophet Elisha commands him to do, Naaman is cured, and what’s more, he’s converted. He says that from that point forward he will worship the true God alone – he asks for two mule-loads of earth so that he can take the sacred soil of Israel back to his own land and worship the true God there. In the Gospel reading, the ten lepers are healed, but only one of them returns to give thanks – only the outsider, the Samaritan. He was not a part of the Jewish people, but he alone sees in Jesus the power of the living God, and he gives thanks for it.
The Ten Lepers (2018) by Jorge Cocco Santángelo
The stories of today’s readings then are more than stories of healing. They are stories of conversion – of a new awareness and appreciation of the power of God. And these stories invite us, I think, to consider our own stories of being healed, or restored, or converted, and whether those experiences have prompted in us gratitude and led us to a deeper experience of God. We might perhaps most readily think of our own experiences of physical healing, of being restored to full health after facing an illness and feeling a new lease on life. There are other kinds of healing, too – spiritual and emotional wounds that are healed, troubled relationships that are made whole, flaws of character that are eventually rectified. And more than any of those, we should all have an experience of the profound restoration that comes from being healed of our sins – of being restored to grace and communion with God through his mercy.
Healing, of whatever kind, should always give rise to gratitude. But it’s not enough to stop there; gratitude must also prompt within us a renewed appreciation for the love of God – a renewed awareness of his restorative power and his desire to draw us always closer to him. And while physical healing, or the healing of relationship, are often very powerful experiences, the most powerful kind of healing we can experience is that at the level of our soul. That is the only kind of healing that lasts beyond this life – indeed, it is the healing that we pray will guide us into the life to come. Naaman the Syrian and the Samaritan leper were both drawn by the power of gratitude to the worship of the true God. That’s how the Lord works – he seeks to change us in order to draw us closer to himself.
Perhaps you know that today in Rome John Henry Newman is being canonized a saint. He was an English theologian and writer, as well as an Anglican priest who had profound influence on the Church of England in the mid 19th century. But after a number of years, later in life, he made the very difficult decision to become Catholic because he came to believe that the Catholic Church is the true Church founded by Christ. This decision cost him quite a bit – it alienated him from many friends and former colleagues, and he lost his teaching post at Oxford. But he never regretted it, because he knew that as a Catholic he had arrived at a deeper and truer love for God. He said about his conversion: “It was like coming into port after a rough sea; and my happiness on that score remains to this day without interruption” (Apologia Pro Vita Sua, ch. 5).
Healing, of whatever kind, should always give rise to gratitude. But it’s not enough to stop there; gratitude must also prompt within us a renewed appreciation for the love of God – a renewed awareness of his restorative power and his desire to draw us always closer to him. And while physical healing, or the healing of relationship, are often very powerful experiences, the most powerful kind of healing we can experience is that at the level of our soul. That is the only kind of healing that lasts beyond this life – indeed, it is the healing that we pray will guide us into the life to come. Naaman the Syrian and the Samaritan leper were both drawn by the power of gratitude to the worship of the true God. That’s how the Lord works – he seeks to change us in order to draw us closer to himself.
Perhaps you know that today in Rome John Henry Newman is being canonized a saint. He was an English theologian and writer, as well as an Anglican priest who had profound influence on the Church of England in the mid 19th century. But after a number of years, later in life, he made the very difficult decision to become Catholic because he came to believe that the Catholic Church is the true Church founded by Christ. This decision cost him quite a bit – it alienated him from many friends and former colleagues, and he lost his teaching post at Oxford. But he never regretted it, because he knew that as a Catholic he had arrived at a deeper and truer love for God. He said about his conversion: “It was like coming into port after a rough sea; and my happiness on that score remains to this day without interruption” (Apologia Pro Vita Sua, ch. 5).
St. John Henry Newman (1801-1890)
Friends, I don’t know if converts make the best Catholics. But I do think that in every Catholic there should be a powerful sense of the spirit of conversion – an awareness of how God’s restorative power has impacted our lives directly. Whether through healing or reconciliation or conversion, we must know something of that grace felt by Naaman the Syrian, the Samaritan healed of leprosy, and St. John Henry Newman. We must gain from our gratitude a renewed devotion to the true and living God.
As we prepare to celebrate again the Holy Eucharist, and to receive the true and living God, may we also rejoice to give thanks at how he has revealed to us “his saving power” (Ps 98:2).
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