HOMILY for 28th Sunday per annum ©
2 Kings 5:14-17; Ps 97; 2 Tim 2:8-13; Luke 17:11-19
“Your faith has saved you”, this is to say that, it is through believing in Jesus Christ, believing in who he is – and he is truly God and truly Man – that we are healed, made whole, saved. All ten lepers believed that Jesus was a miracle worker and a healer – they’d obviously heard about him and had seen him from afar. So, as soon as he enters their village, they call out to him and ask him to have mercy and heal them. However, this is not faith. This is consumerism or just begging – asking for something from someone who can give us what we want. And this, unfortunately, is how many of us might pray. We ask for things, and if we don’t get what we asked for, we go away disappointed, our so-called faith shattered. So the ten lepers ask to be healed of their leprosy, and they’re willing to obey Jesus, just as I might obey my doctor when he tells me to take certain tablets, or do more exercise and so on. And if I do, then my health improves. In a sense this is all that the lepers do, notwithstanding the miraculous nature of their healing.
But Jesus heals them miraculously because he wants to bring them to faith. What I mean by this is that the Lord wants them to recognise who he is, and thus enter into a relationship founded on trust, love, and gratitude. God always wants this of us because God is love. Hence, St Paul says to Timothy: “We may be unfaithful, but he is always faithful, for he cannot disown his own self. “ God can never disown us, because he has bound us to his own self through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. Hence, God wants us to know him as intimately as a shepherd knows his sheep; to trust in him as a child trusts a mother or father; and to rejoice in him, as the leper does when he praises God “at the top of his voice.” This relationship that God desires with you and me, therefore, is intimate, friendly, warm and loving. Few of us have that kind of relationship with our doctor, or the pharmacist, or the delivery man. Those relationships are transactional – they’re based on commerce, on buying and selling, and getting what we want. Sadly, most people seem to view God, and indeed, view the Church, and their own parishes, and priests in this way. But this is not how it should be, it is not what God desires. The prophet Elisha makes it clear that God doesn’t want a present or any favours from Naaman in return, because he is not buying a service from God. Rather, God wants an exclusive relationship with Naaman: “your servant will no longer offer holocaust or sacrifice to any god except the Lord.” Because it is this kind of intimate marital-like relationship that God desires, and not the kind of attitude that sees God as a service provider. This would be an obstacle to having a faith that saves.
Consider, on the other hand, the Samaritan who is cured. He jumps with joy, praising God, as soon as the miracle is worked and he runs back to Jesus. For he realises at once who Jesus is. This is not just a Master, as in a wise teacher. This is not just a miracle healer who he calls upon to have pity on him. No, this is God for only God can heal like this. And he believes this through a gift of the Holy Spirit, for this kind of living faith is a divine gift from God. But he is able to believe, able to receive the gift of faith because he has a good disposition, he is open to believing, he is humbly in search of Truth in all its fullness. He is, as St John Henry Newman (whose canonisation we celebrate today) says, “on the look -out”. So, Newman explains: “As the Jewish believers were on the look-out for a Messiah who they knew was to come, so at all times, and under all dispensations, and in all sects, there are those who know there is a truth, who know they do not possess it except in a very low measure, who desire to know more, who know that He alone who has taught them what they know, can teach them more, who hope that He will teach them more, and so are on the look-out for His teaching.” Such people, therefore, are humble, open to grace, and looking for God.
These qualities are evident in the Samaritan. We see his humility as he comes and prostrates himself before Jesus. In doing so, he acknowledges the divinity of Christ. And then he gives thanks to Jesus, or literally (in Greek), gives him glory – again, he does something that is normally reserved for God, so he believes in who we know Jesus to be. Because the Samaritan, in humility and faith has acknowledged who Jesus is, the Lord tells him: “your faith has saved you.” In Greek, the sentence has two meanings: your faith has healed you, which refers to the physical cure from leprosy, and then the deeper meaning, your faith has saved you, had led to your eternal salvation.
So too for us in our time. God can only heal and save us, he can only draw us to himself in love if we go to him in humility, if we’re open to being loved by him, and if we’re willing to trust him and let him be our loving and merciful God. So many resist and refuse to turn back to him, like the nine other lepers. Many, indeed, do not want to have a genuine personal relationship with God, preferring to have a consumerist approach to the Faith. Many prefer their own ways, their own ideas, their own habits of mind and action, and a relationship with God is just too demanding, because he might expect too much of us. As St John Henry Newman comments, “their own passion or pride, self-love or self-will” makes it difficult to hear the voice of God, to acknowledge him, to believe and trust in him.
Newman knew the demands of faith. His humble search for the fullness of the Truth, his search for deep friendship with Jesus Christ led him to the Catholic Church. He left behind a successful career as an Anglican vicar, Oxford professor, and respected man in Victorian society; he left behind old friends, and a secure livelihood, and the familiar in order to follow his conscience. And his conscience led him to become a Catholic. As Pope Benedict XVI said when he came to London in 2010: “Newman’s life… teaches us that passion for the truth, intellectual honesty and genuine conversion are costly. In our own time, the price to be paid for fidelity to the Gospel… often involves being dismissed out of hand, ridiculed or parodied. [However, like Newman] if we have accepted the truth of Christ and committed our lives to him, there can be no separation between what we believe and the way we live our lives. Our every thought, word and action must be directed to the glory of God and the spread of his Kingdom.”
And what about us today? God wills to give us the faith of the Samaritan, the faith of Newman, if we only approach him with humble trust and gratitude. We’re invited each day to trust in God’s love and providence. This trust comes from real relationship with God, it is the fruit of prayer. And there is, I think, no better prayer today, no more beautiful an expression of trust in divine providence than this poem by heaven’s newest Saint, John Henry Newman:
“Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.
I was not for ever thus, nor prayed that thou
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.
So long thy power hath blessed me, sure it still
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.”
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