Dear Parish Family,

The incident of Cleansing of the Lepers in St. Luke’s Gospel is a familiar one. Undoubtedly it is often interpreted as an example of Gratitude. Based on this incident St. Ignatius developed a special part of his famous Spiritual Exercise. You can read a ‘teaser’ of it on Pg. 6 of this Bulletin.   Besides the lesson of Gratitude, the Lukan narrative seems to allude to something deeper for our reflection. Luke is careful to note that this episode occurs “along the borders of Samaria and Galilee” (apart from Jericho, this is the only location he mentions during the whole nine-chapter journey from Galilee to Jerusalem). When Jesus instructs the ten lepers to “show (themselves) to the priests,” two things are implied. First, he is telling them to do what Leviticus instructs those who recover from diseases that ostracized them from society, to get certified by the Temple personnel as cured, so that they might resume normal life in the community. Second, the lone Samaritan (whom we learn later is among the ten) has a dilemma: to which temple should he report? Jesus surely means the Jerusalem Temple, but as a Samaritan he would naturally will want to go to Mount Gerizim as the true place to worship God, and his priests are, of course, the Samaritan priests at Gerizim.

Since both Gerizim and Jerusalem are south of Galilee, the Samaritan can begin heading south with the gang of ten, but eventually he must face this choice of the proper place to meet God’s mediators. On the way, the ten are cleansed from their disease. The Samaritan, alone among the ten, gets an insight: neither Jerusalem nor Gerizim is the sacred place to meet the mediation of God’s presence. That “sacred space” is now he realizes is the person of Jesus. And so he comes back to Jesus “praising God in a loud voice.” He falls at the feet of Jesus thanking him. Beyond the physical cure he seems to be enlightened by the truth of who Jesus is. There is more to that word “thanking” than meets our English-reading eye and ear. For Luke writes euchariston—a word that is used in the Greek Bible only for thanks and praise given God. And “God” in Luke’s writings is reserved for the Father. Thus, in Luke’s language, this sentence is saying, in effect, that the Samaritan is acknowledging that the proper place to encounter the presence of God is in the person of Jesus.

Jesus’ own words affirm this insight: “Was no one found who turned back to give glory to God except this foreigner?” Even the Greek word used here for “foreigner” (allogenes) is another decisive pointer. It was the word used on the signs posted on the balustrade in the Jerusalem Temple precincts, separating the Court of the Gentiles from the Court of Israel, banning non-Jews such as Samaritans from that more sacred inner court on pain of death. Ironically, as Luke will spell out in the Acts of the Apostles, it is the foreigner who comes to see that Jesus is now the privileged “place” to meet the presence and healing power of the God of all. The journey back of the healed Samaritan to Jesus will have great impact in his personal life. He is definitely uprooting himself from his own past life before his ostracized life into a new life of faith in the person of Christ. We may be ‘cradle-christened’ but maybe we are lacking the courage to publically own up our belief in the person of Christ. “Acknowledge me before people and I will acknowledge you before the Father” is a great promise that Christ made to the disciples and to each of us.