TWENTY-EIGHTH SUNDAY
IN ORDINARY TIME
Saturday, 11 October 2025, St.
Katherine Drexel
2 Kgs 5:14-17
2 Tm 2:8-13
Lk 17:11-19
The
Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power.
Don’t mind me, but I have to express my conviction that declarations
like this one from the psalms, from our responsorial psalm today don’t really
make enough of an impression upon us, when we sing or recite them. The Lord
has revealed to the nations his saving power. That is especially true in
terms of our understanding and profession of how He makes His power known to
all the ends of the earth. Let’s take the example of miraculous healings.
The horrible disease
of leprosy figures big in both our first reading from 2 Kings and in the Gospel
passage we just read from St. Luke chapter 17. We may not have run into this
horrible illness in our own experience, but for most of human history up until very
recently, leprosy was considered a death sentence after long suffering and
social isolation for those who contracted it. The infection was very much
feared. With that in mind, it is fair to ask why the Gospel of Luke doesn’t
record a bigger reaction to Jesus healing those 10 lepers.
Even today, we may have heard of
leper colonies in southeast Asia or Africa, places where the infected went to
die in misery. Perhaps we know of Damien De Veuster, popularly known as Father
Damien or Saint Damien of Molokai (born in Belgium on 3 January 1840
– and died in Hawaii on 15 April 1889). He was a Belgian Catholic priest in the
Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. He ministered to a leper
colony in Molokai, Kingdom of Hawaii, from 1873 until his death in 1889. After
11 years caring for the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of those in
the leper colony, Father De Veuster himself contracted leprosy. He continued
with his work despite the infection but finally succumbed to the disease at
only 49 years of age. De Veuster was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on 11
October 2009.
On this Sunday the
Naaman the Syrian we read about in 2 Kings was a military general, a warlord, who
had the confidence of his king and could pretty well write his own ticket. But
nothing to do, He was a leper. A little maid of his wife, captured in a raid on
Israel offered this tough guy the first hope of healing or cleansing from this
malady. But as Sacred Scripture tells us he had to learn from this little slave
girl and from his own servants that tough as he was and despite his commanding
presence, Naaman could not set the terms for his own healing and salvation. He
could not give orders to the one true God. Elisha, the man of God, pointed the
way for him which was to be achieved through humble obedience: “Go and dunk
yourself in the Jordan River seven times”.
In the Gospel, we
hear that the 10 lepers calling to Jesus on the road had a similar experience. “Go show yourselves to the priests!” All ten were
healed, but only the Samaritan recognized that their healing was bound to
confession of faith in Christ: your faith has saved you.
The Lord has
revealed to the nations his saving power. What should be your Sunday meditations?
How should you reflect on God’s power and His action in our world and specifically
in your life? Think, if you will, especially about how renouncing stubborn,
habitual sin in your life can free you for true happiness in this life and in
the next. Spend some quiet time this Sunday considering how through obedience
to all of God’s commands and through the humbling experience of making a good
and honest confession (“Go and dunk yourself in the Jordan River seven times”) can
free you and heal you from what keeps you outside the circle of the fullness of
life already now and forever. “Go show yourselves to the priests!” That is
Jesus’ command and the pathway to true happiness and holiness.
Praised be
Jesus Christ!
