Sunday Gospel Comment
Alberic Jacovone OSB
YEAR C TWENTY-EIGHTH SUNDAY - 10.10.04 2 Kg 5,14-17; 2 Tim 2,8-13; Lk 17, 11-19 Cleansing cut-off feelings Feeling
cut-off as a leper.
Luke’s story of the ten lepers gives us an opportunity to
re-visit, re-call & re-live those experiences in our lives, when we
feel outcast & unclean, outsider & cut-off, through no fault of our own.
Social concern & social boundaries require (& rightly so) that people
infected with contagious diseases be quarantines and ostracized, lest they
contaminate other people. This decision however, need not degenerate into
hatred, and give us the right to condemn one another, as if tragedy &
sickness are the result of God’s punishment for sinful behaviour and that now
it serves us right to be exposed & shunned and rejected as ‘living
dead’. The deeper reality is that, even when people do not ostracize us, many
times we do it ourselves: we judge ourselves we attribute to ourselves all sorts
of polluting effects, which make us feed contaminated & contagious,
condemned & cut-off from God and people. We know that no sickness is a
punishment for personal or social sin, yet we still experience strong forces
that compel us to feel as moral and physical outcasts. When hit by
self-rejection & self-condemnation, we feel as if we are in constant danger
of being contaminated in both physical and religious sense.....
Today we welcome the story of the Ten Lepers which means to make us come
in contact with our own feelings of clean and unclean in all possible meanings,
relating to health, ritual, ethnic, religious bias and condemnatory attitudes.
Luke is not afraid of disorienting us, when it comes to inner fears &
responsibilities: in the hatred between Jews and Samaritans, it is a despised
Samaritan who stops to save the life of a Jew who fell into the hands of robbers
and proves to be the perfect keeper of God’s commandment: love God &
neighbour, even if he is your annoying & hated foreigner. A need to say thanks. In our story, Jesus sadly realizes that it is a despised foreigner, and none of the other true-blue Jews, who -upon receiving the full impact of his healing-, responds & returns, gives thanks & gives glory to God. Thus, he receives the further blessing of ‘faith’. A Lesson for us: irrespective of crosses or tragedies, privileges or achievements, we must all be thankful and willing to humble ourselves before our loving creator. Sadly in our life, we build all sorts of barriers, which keep us cut off from God, people and one another. We need to return constantly to thoughts of peace & unity, inner healing & self esteem. As in Jesus’ time, so today, racial and all forms of discrimination continue to plague our life. In Jesus’ time, a despised Samaritan Leper, overcomes his ethnic and multicultural bias, and returns to praise God & say thanks, and in turn is further blessed, healed and made into a disciple. The world-view that Jesus has for himself and proposes for his followers, is that our life on earth is to be experienced, as a precious gift which is at constant risk. Life itself is on the move: -we are travellers- in a world of uneasy compromise and transition. Jesus himself travels his marginalized road, and moved courageously towards his destiny on Calvary and Cross. We like that despised foreign leper, are invited to adopt a life whereby we are grateful, give glory to God and say thank. Healing & recovery at all levels are a free gift of God, for which we long & give glory to God. Today’s story wants to create a turning point in our life as it did in the life of the Samaritan foreigner. Just as he prostrated himself at the feet of Jesus and shouted aloud his public “Halleluja” (which means praise to Yahweh - glory be to Father Son & Spirit) so are we to do now in our life. In return our life of faith will be energized. ______________________________________ |
