My Dear People,

Since the Paschal celebrations were approaching, Jesus took His final trip to Jerusalem intending to accomplish His divine mission. As He traveled through Samaria and Galilee, heading for Perea, He was approaching a village. Still in the countryside, ten lepers rushed to meet Him. They stopped far enough away so as not to have contact with people and began shouting, loudly, begging for mercy. Their faith was an act of trust! They knew Jesus to be powerful and hoped He would ease their pain. It was not a faith of complete abandonment! Yet, Jesus wanted to re-ignite this in them with a command which they could only obey with a “full” faith. “Go”, He said: “show yourselves to the priests.”

While traveling through Samaria, Jesus wanted to perform an act of pure mercy toward a people much despised by the Jews by pointing out the gratitude and the faith of the Samaritan. By so doing, He wanted to show that the Samaritans were not an inferior people. On the contrary, it could be said, in this moment, they were superior to the Jews. Going through Samaria, Jesus wanted to eliminate this sense of contempt by his fellow Jews. He wanted to prevent all recriminations, and He directly called all people to the unity He had come to establish on earth. Jesus Christ went to Jerusalem to give His life for all!  He went to sinners, who truly possessed leprous souls. He wanted to manifest symbolically what was burning in His Heart. He would give His blood to save us! Nevertheless, He would not apply the price of redemption without considering the mediation of a priest. 

It is a most sad illusion to think, because He can save us without mediators, that He embraces it. In instituting the priesthood, He told everyone: to “Go show yourself to the priest.” It is obvious, since He saved us by His obedience and death on the cross, that He wants us to have the benefit of salvation by the obedience and humiliation of ourselves at the feet of a priest, so that our miserable sin may die.

We are indeed lepers when we sin, and we have lesions that consume our soul. We cry out to God for mercy and go to the priests to receive it. When we are sincerely sorry and have a deep conviction of the evil we have done offending God, then we, too, experience that! 

While confessing to a priest, we are cleansed because the perfect contrition wipes our sins away immediately.  It is necessary, always, to go to the priest, because this is the condition put in place by Jesus. We cannot be sure our contrition is perfect! (The lepers also had a duty to go to the temple so that their healing could be officially and legally recognized.) 

The Lord lamented the fact that only one of the ten healed lepers came back to thank Him and to give praise to God; and, so, He wanted to teach us the great importance of being grateful for the blessings we receive from the Lord. The act of gratitude is the recognition of the glory of God! It is a confession of His power and a filial abandonment to Him that He may bless us as the most loving of fathers. 

The Lord does not require our gratitude to benefit Himself, although our praise increases His glory adventitiously, but because our act of gratitude opens to us new sources of mercy and graces. The Samaritan lepers, however, were already healed! Prostrated at His feet, Jesus said with great care: “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.” 

Each time we thank our Lord we receive from His goodness new graces. The early Christians used to greet each other with these lovely words: Deo Gratias. These words seemed foolish to the Gentiles because they were more a conclusion than a greeting.  

For the early Christians when greeting each other in this way, they were thanking God that they were meeting again and grateful that Jesus Christ had redeemed them.

[Reflections on the Four Gospels by Don Dolindo Ruotolo]

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Vincent Clemente