October 9, 2016 — Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
2 KGS 5: 14-17; PS 98: 1-4; 2 TM 2: 8-13; LK 17: 11-19
Our Gospel Reading from St. Luke relates to how Jesus healed 10 lepers. However, only one realized the full sense of his healing and he returned to say “Thank you.” To that gesture Jesus responds to him, “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.” This is another case where something may have been lost in our translation.
The last line in its original Greek might also be translated “Your faith has made you whole,” or “Your faith has made you well.” In any case, the point is the importance of gratitude to God. How often have we pointed out that stewardship is a response in gratitude to God’s blessings? That ongoing and consistent feeling of thanks is so important.
Jesus healed 10, but only one was really completely healed. The other nine were healed physically, but only the one who felt the gratitude was healed both physically and spiritually. In that sense he was truly “made whole” and “saved.”
That is the same salvation that we seek, and the key to it would seem to be that deep sense of thanksgiving as part of our lives and how we live them. Bishop John C. Wester of the Diocese of Salt Lake City opened a recent stewardship conference in his diocese by saying, “Stewardship is about gratitude — recognizing what there is to be thankful for. Gratitude is at the heart of our faith in the Eucharist.”
