Today's lepers, giving thanks

By REV. J. THOMAS CONNERY- | Comments: 0 | Leave a comment

"As [Jesus] was entering a village, 10 lepers met Him. They stood at a distance from Him and raised their voices, saying, 'Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!' When He saw them, He said, "Go show yourselves to the priests.' As they were going, they were cleansed. One of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, praising God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked Him. He was a Samaritan. Jesus said in reply, 'Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?' Then He said to him, 'Stand up and go; your faith has saved you'" (Luke 17:11-19).

We listen to the one who came back to thank Jesus, realizing that he was cured. In the culture of the day in which Jesus lived, if contracted leprosy, your name was written in a book. A bell was attached to your ankle so that, when you walked down the street, people would move aside.

Jesus was entering the city, heard the bells and didn't move aside. "They were at a distance": The lepers were probably afraid to get too close, so that Jesus wouldn't contract the disease.

The lepers also had to leave the city at dusk. They were not allowed inside the city walls after dark. (In the movie "Ben Hur," Charlton Heston played the role of a Jew. He went to visit his mother and sister, who had leprosy; they were living in a cave with other lepers.)

Jesus says, "Go and show yourself to the priests" - meaning, "Have your name taken off the books, the bell cut off your ankle." On recognizing his healing, one leper - a Samaritan - turned back, "praising God with a loud voice....He fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving Him thanks."

It's a beautiful scene, isn't it? Healing...appreciation...giving thanks to Jesus.

Have you ever thought of the leper of the present day? Back in the 1970s, when AIDS was first diagnosed, what happened to those people? They were ostracized by society. They couldn't live where they wished.

A man I knew, working in New York City, was diagnosed with AIDS; he wanted to come back to Albany to live. There was only one neighborhood where he could get an apartment: by Albany Medical Center. I visited him occasionally. He received the sacraments of the Church and had a horrible death.

Later, in the 1990s, AIDS was a bit more accepted by society. A beautiful woman was coming out of church one Sunday morning; I said to her, "Who are you?" She said, "Father, I was a prostitute in New York City. I contracted AIDS and have come back home to live with my father." Over the next two years, she was anointed and received communion frequently. I was with her a few days before she died. She is a saint in heaven, having lived through such suffering and become closer to Our Lord and the Church.

I felt privileged by God to have shared in her journey. Like the leper, she came back and gave thanks.

The idea of Thanksgiving is a response to life as a gift. The expression of thanksgiving is a mature realization of human existence: that is, acknowledging the gift-giver. Thanksgiving implies an active response, a recognition of the other and a willingness to respond graciously, especially to God. God is pre-eminently worthy of our thankfulness.

In the very act of giving thanks in gratitude, our lives can be opened to an understanding of our calling to a final transcendence: to be with God forever, which far surpasses anything we can imagine here and now, and for which we are prepared by our own, present response to God's graciousness.

The first chapter of St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians states: "I do not cease giving thanks to you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation, resulting in knowledge of Him. May the eyes of our hearts be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope that belongs to His call, what are the riches of glory in His inheritance, among the holy ones."

May we always give thanks to God.

(Father Connery is a retired priest of the Albany Diocese in residence at Immaculate Conception parish in Glenville.)[[In-content Ad]]