This morning’s Gospel reading is Luke 17:11–19:

As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem, he traveled through Samaria and Galilee. As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him. They stood at a distance from him and raised their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!” And when he saw them, he said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” As they were going they were cleansed. And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying 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.”

I’ve told this joke about ingratitude for the Lord’s miracles before, but it fits so well with today’s Gospel reading that I can’t resist telling it again. A grandmother walks with her young son along the beach, he dressed in his finest clothes from his hat to his shoes, on a nice summer day. Suddenly a massive wave crashes down upon them, and the grandson is carried off to sea. The grandmother looks up to the sky and pleads, “Oh Lord, if only you bring back my beloved grandson, I will be forever grateful and will spend the rest of my days praising Your name.”

Suddenly another wave crashes down on the beach, and the grandson is washed onto the shore, drenched but perfectly healthy. The grandmother embraces him, checks him out, and then looks back at the sky. “So,” she says to the Lord, “where’s his hat?”

Today’s Gospel and first reading from 2 Kings teach us about how familiarity and gratitude tend to become negatively correlated, both in our own relationships with others but especially with the Lord. This tendency tests our assumptions about love, let alone obedience, and runs as a constant theme throughout salvation history. It starts in the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve lose the sense of gratitude toward God and instead intend to usurp His throne in Creation, and continues right down to the missing hat of the joke.

However, we also learn something about perseverance too — and why persistence matters. Paul makes that clear to Timothy in today’s second reading, but it is more of a subtle part of today’s recounting of the miracle of healing for Naaman, a mighty general of the land of Aram. Naaman too suffered from leprosy, like the ten men in our Gospel reading. His wife’s servant, an Israelite girl, told his wife that Naaman should go to Elisha in Samaria for healing.

Rather than meet with Naaman, however, Elisha sent out a servant to tell the general to wash himself seven times in the Jordan River. Naaman grew angry, expecting Elisha to personally perform a miracle or some magic to make the leprosy immediately disappear. Still, his servants convinced him to do as Elisha said, and the leprosy disappeared immediately.

Naaman, a foreigner in Israel, converted immediately and wished to show his gratitude. Elisha would not accept any gift, however, as we hear in the brief excerpt of this story in today’s readings. Instead, Elisha allows Naaman to take two mule-loads of earth from Israel to bring home with him so that Naaman can properly sacrifice to the Lord.

What does this tell us? First, it shows that the deeper the revelation, the greater the gratitude will likely be. But why did Naaman have to wash seven times in the Jordan to be healed? For that matter, why the Jordan? Naaman himself asks this in the earlier passages, angrily remarking to his servants that the rivers of Damascus were of better quality. Why not have Naaman do this closer to home, and why didn’t the Lord work the miracle on the first washing?

This is a lesson on perseverance, and a reminder that the Lord works in His own time rather than in ours. We can even note the symbolism of conversion that crossing the Jordan represents, especially seven times. But it is the perseverance of fulfilling the Lord’s command that should stick with us, and the need to put that perseverance in service to our faith at all times.

Let’s get back to gratitude. Elisha refuses Naaman’s gifts, although he accepts Naaman’s conversion and gives Naaman the soil he requests. Jesus, however, makes a point about the lack of such gratitude coming from the nine Judeans as opposed to the one supposedly heretical but grateful Samaritan. What point does Jesus make here? The Samaritan expressed his gratitude to Jesus as Naaman did to Elisha, but gave his praise to the Lord for the healing itself. That was also Elisha’s point — that the Lord provided the healing and Elisha was His instrument, not the source of the healing itself.

In other words, Jesus isn’t unhappy that the other nine didn’t personally thank Him. He pointed out, rather, that the other nine didn’t thank anyone, but especially not the Lord who chose them to be healed through their faith. Only the Samaritan — the stranger, the presumed heretic unclean in faith as well as in body — went out of his way to proclaim his gratitude and love for the Lord.

It is that gratitude and recognition of the miracle of healing, and that perseverance as well, that allows the Samaritan to be saved. The rest seem to have treated their salvation as a birthright, a trap into which the Israelites and Judeans fell repeatedly over the course of salvation history. It is not enough to be born into the faith community, and it is not even enough to go through the motions of that faith. We grow numb to the wonder of God reaching down to us to save sinners, even going so far as to present His Word Incarnate to suffer the penalty of those sins on our behalf and become resurrected in perfection afterward. We fail to take the lessons of that love and instead simply take it for granted.

It is not enough to just take note of Christ, or even to follow His commands, as the nine did in this event (notably not a parable as presented by Luke). The Lord calls us to be His children and live in the intimacy of the Trinitarian life, but also to recognize it as the unwarranted gift that it is and to have gratitude for it. That is how we recognize God’s Lordship and reminds us what a treasure healing and salvation from our sins actually is.

When we show gratitude for our gifts, especially the extraordinary gift of salvation, it is a recognition of the reality of Creation. That is what will deliver us to eternal life with the Lord. Hats will not be required.

Update: My friend Elizabeth “The Anchoress” Scalia offered her own perspective on this week’s readings. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Liked what I read at Mass tonight. Something kind of consoling, yeah? #TheTabletsofOurHearts pic.twitter.com/CmZhhDbech

— Elizabeth Scalia (@TheAnchoress) October 9, 2022

The front-page image is a detail from “Elisha Refusing Naaman’s Gifts” by Lambert Jacobsz, c. 1628-33. Part of the Leiden Collection privately owned by Thomas S. Kaplan and his wife Daphne Recanati Kaplan. Via Wikimedia Commons. 

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature, looking at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.