13th Sunday after Pentecost, August 26, 2012
(Epistle Galatians 3: 16-22. Gospel Luke 17: 11-19)
Jesus rebukes the ungrateful. To these ten lepers in today’s Gospel, Jesus gave back their health, their families, their position in the community -- He gave them back their very lives – yet nine out of ten of them didn’t even thank Him. But there is more to this event than just the cure of the ten and rebuking the ungrateful. This event, and all events in Christ’s life, is filled with meaning.
Today’s Gospel reading tells us that “He passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee.” The Jews and Samaritans did not like each other. Jesus passes through their midst to demonstrate to them, as if to reconcile them, that the Messiah and the new Covenant He establishes now make all factions into one.
Next the Gospel describes the ten lepers. We see from the text that they were standing together because they called out together, “Have mercy on us.” He sends them to the priests to show themselves, and a short time later, the one who returns to thank Him is a Samaritan. This tells us the ten lepers were both Jews and Samaritans, who were driven to live together because of their disease. Again this demonstrates that the New Covenant has made all people into one new man, because the law of the Gospel is that leprosy of the skin is not unclean, rather, it’s the leprosy of our souls that is unclean. The Samaritan returned because he was miraculously cured by Christ – who he now knows to be God. He fell on his face before Him because he was ashamed of all the sins he now remembers that he committed. The Son of God tells him, “Arise, go thy way; for thy faith hath made thee whole.” If faith made whole the one who bowed down to give thanks, then it is lack of faith that destroys those who do not give glory to God for the many favors God gives to them. Christ rebukes the ungrateful when He says, “There is no one found to give glory to God except this stranger?”
In the passage just preceding the cure of the lepers, the Apostles ask our Lord for an increase of faith. (Luke 17: 1-10) Jesus tells them through a short parable that the way to increase faith is through humility and obedience to their Master. Immediately afterward, the Apostles see this in action, when the Samaritan returns and falls on his face to give thanks and glory to God for his cure of leprosy.
Psalm 36 has something to say on ingratitude: “The sinner shall borrow, and not pay again; but the just sheweth mercy, and shall give.” In other words, the sinner receives but he does not return. With his hardened heart he returns blasphemies and contempt to God. What does he not return? An expression of thanks. What can God possibly give us, or allow to happen to us, unless it is for our good? What do we receive that we ought to return and give thanks for? Everything. We can start with our very existence in His universe. Thank him for our mind that sets us apart from the beasts of the earth. If we have hearing, taste, touch, and we can walk and talk, thank Him for that. Thank Him for your Faith and for the Mass and Sacraments and priests. Thank him for your health and also for your illnesses and setbacks, which allow us to come closer to Him when we offer these up to Him as a gift of love. Thank him for our heart, which, as St. Augustine says, remains restless until it rests in Him.
We have known that uneasy feeling inside of us, that feeling that something’s not right. We felt if we could just put our finger on that one thing that is missing in our lives we would be okay. But some of us now know what that one thing is; and that uneasy and unsure feeling goes away, when we commit ourselves to obedience to Christ and to His Church. That is the one thing, and that is really something to be thankful for.
In today’s Epistle reading, St Paul talks about the purpose of the Law of Moses and the meaning of the word “seed” as used in the promise God made to Abraham. The word “seed” can be used to mean one or many. We rely on the authority of the Apostle Paul that the word “seed” here refers to Jesus Christ. The law, which came hundreds of years later, does not make void the promise that God Himself made to Abraham, that mankind was to be blessed only by Christ. That blessing, which is redemption, could not be made by the Law through Moses who was a mediator between God and Man. A mediator is not “of one: but God is one” as St. Paul puts it. And Christ is God. God Himself made the promise of Christ to Abraham. The Law was made through a mediator. So in this sense the Law of Moses is inferior to the promise to Abraham.
The Prophet Ezechiel shows us Paul’s meaning in Chapter 20: 10, 11, where he says that after bringing the Israelites out of the desert he gave them His statutes, the Ten Commandments “which if a man do, he shall live in them.” But they violated these and became guilty of idolatry. To punish them God imposed on them precepts “which are not good, and which give not life,” as Ezechiel tells us in the same Chapter 20: 24, 25. This was the ceremonial Law of Moses which was established during the 40 years in the desert. This Law was given to punish the Israelites for their sins and to prevent their relapse into sin, and this is the sense of St. Paul’s comments to the Galatians in today’s Epistle reading. Paul ends by telling us that Scriptures has declared all to be under sin, from which they could not be delivered except through faith in Jesus Christ, the promised seed. +++
We Celebrate the Tridentine Latin Mass
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