A Homily for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

​+ “One of [the lepers], when he saw that he was cured, turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving Him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus said, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?”
 
Where indeed! To be cured from leprosy was then, and is still now, no small matter. When one has cried out and begged for the mercy of healing, one would rightly expect—as a matter of justice and not merely of polite social convention—at least some act thanksgiving upon receiving it.
 
If we look carefully at the language used by St Luke, we begin to see that this passage from the Holy Gospel is not simply a record of complacent ingratitude in the face of ultimate generosity, and of the extraordinary fact that it takes an outsider to do what is just in response, we can also begin to recognise that what is being described is highly cultic or liturgical.  
 
The lepers are told to go and show themselves to the priests, presumably so that their healing can be verified and so that they can be reintegrated into the community. What do have here other than an analogy for the cleansing waters of Baptism and indeed of the grace of what the Church came to call the “second baptism” which is nothing other than the Sacrament of Penance or Confession, so much needed in our day? For whilst the actual disease of leprosy may thankfully be rare in our times, the leprosy of sin and the spiritual deformation it brings abound. Our Lord’s command to “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” speaks clearly: let us not hesitate so to do, so that in this most beautiful sacrament we might encounter His mercy and receive the healing we so desperately need.
 
So too, St Luke chooses his words carefully in describing the reaction of the healed Samaritan. He returns to Our Lord loudly “glorifying God”—the use of the Greek word “doxa” makes clear that this is a cultic activity—and, falling on his face, gave Him thanks”. This is no peremptory “Thanks very much.” It is an act of worship of Almighty God. Again the Greek “eucharistein” employed by St Luke has clear liturgical connotations, as indeed does his reference to falling on one’s face before the Lord.
 
Let us consider this a little. The gift of being healed by the power of Almighty God from leprosy requires a response from the person healed, of which response the Samaritan is exemplary. So too the gift of baptism, and the gift of a “second baptism” in the Sacrament of Penance (no matter however many times we may need to receive this gift) requires from us, in justice, an appropriate response, lest we be counted amongst the nine.
 
What is this response? It is nothing other than to fall on our faces before the Lord and to give Him thanks. This has been the Church’s solemn but joyful duty for two millennia: to offer the Sacrament of Thanksgiving, the Most Blessed Eucharist, to Almighty God in humble gratitude for the gift of our salvation made possible by the Sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross.
 
Indeed, so profoundly grateful were our forebears for the cleansing they received in Holy Baptism that over the centuries this thanksgiving was enriched and developed into the noble edifice that we call the Sacred Liturgy. Nothing was or is too good to offer in thanksgiving to Our Blessed Lord in celebration for all that He has given and continues to give to us! Indeed, the very stones of this monastery church were erected in their sober Romanesque perfection a thousand years ago by a Provencal family who wished to offer thanks to Almighty God, and it is the singular privilege of we monks to restore it to its true purpose and to do so here once again, seven times a day and once at night.
 
Using the words of St Thomas Aquinas the Church exhorts us to ‘dare to do as much as we can’ (“Quantum potes, tantum aude;” Sequence of Corpus Christi) in praise of the gift of our salvation in Christ made present in the Blessed Eucharist. It is somewhat unfitting, therefore, if not downright unworthy, that so much of our precious liturgical heritage so faithfully handed on in Tradition was hastily jettisoned by the parsimonious reform following the most recent Ecumenical Council. Indeed, it is dangerous, for when what is handed on in Tradition becomes subject to the positivistic policies of those who grasp authority with the intent to impose their own agenda, Christ Himself and the demands He makes of us in justice (liturgically, doctrinally, morally, etc.) can all too easily be cast aside. His grace and our thanksgiving to Him for it almost become unnecessary as we congratulate and thank ourselves for what we have done for Him!
 
We must avoid this grave error—which is dangerously present in our day—at all costs. And we must fight and resist its incursions into the life of the Church of Christ.
 
Our duty is that of the Samaritan: humbly to cast ourselves at the foot of the altar in profound thanksgiving for the graces we have received. It is to offer Our Saviour the most worthy adoration of heart, mind, soul and body of which we are capable, full of reverential gratitude to our forebears for the riches of Tradition that they developed under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and have handed on to us, ever conscious of the duty faithfully to hand these riches on in an ever-new, living and fruitful integrity so that generations to come may themselves offer worthy thanksgiving to Almighty God for all that He wishes to do for them. +