28 Sunday C Ten lepers

Ten lepers

You could say that leprosy was the worst sickness. They used to call lepers “living dead”. Your body died slowly, in front of you, in front of others. You were thrown out of society, you became a castaway; some of them literally were being sent to an island, like Molokai. You had to walk round sounding a bell like an animal, crying out: impure, stained. They were like zombies. It was considered a punishment from God; he had touched your flesh with his finger and the corruption from the grave was beginning to get you. In a way it was a graphic way to have your death in front of your eyes. We are one of those ten lepers. We don’t normally see it, but our soul stinks. We are missing some limbs and we cannot walk; we lost our fingers to be able to touch; our eyes are gone, and we cannot see. We are blind, deaf and paralysed to spiritual realities. We all need to realise that we need healing from God. The more we recognise our leprosy, our real illness, the more we will look for him. How can we be healed if we don’t acknowledge our sickness?

A new leper joined the shameful community and told them about the miraculous prophet. They abandoned their caves and set out to look for him. Hopeless sick people are always hopeful of new treatments. It is possible to be cleansed of our leprosy and our flesh restored, like Naaman the Syrian, whose flesh became as tender as the skin of a little child. We normally don’t believe that we can be cured of our vices or addictions. And we give up. We stop looking for him.

We don’t know how long these lepers looked for Jesus. We don’t know how long we too need to look for him. But if we don’t look for him, we won’t find him and we won’t be healed. If we look for him, eventually we will come across him, like the lepers did, because at the end he is the one looking for us.

From a distance the ten lepers cried out: Jesus, Master, have mercy on us! A good act of faith. He told them to present themselves to the priests, to certify their cure. He could have touched them but demanded from them a little faith. They were disappointed; they thought he was going to heal them there instantly, but they didn’t know what to do and went to see the priests without much conviction. Like us, many times we do things without knowing really what to do. Go to the priest! He is telling us the same: Go to confession! Have faith in me. I can cure you. Go! While they were on their way, they were cured. We don’t know if it was instantly or gradually. But It must have been an amazing sight. Ten men dancing and embracing each other. The Samaritan told them they had to go back to thank Jesus. They said that Jesus told them to present themselves to the priests. They wanted to see their families as soon as possible. How quick we are to forget what God has done for us!

Only one came back to give thanks. It was a Samaritan, an outcast. Jesus complained: Where are the nine? It is one of the big disappointments of our Lord. This question keeps sounding through the timeline of history. He keeps asking this question to us: Where are you? We can be the nine or the one. Let us not disappoint Jesus. He has healed us many times and we haven’t returned to give him thanks.

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