October 12, 2025 -- 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C
2 Kings 5:14-17; 2 Timothy 2:8-13; Luke 17:11-19
Homily
The theme of last Sunday's readings was faith (“If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you”). Today's readings from the Word of God speak to us about a dimension of faith or, if you prefer, a consequence of faith: healing. The first and third readings both speak explicitly about healing—and healing obtained through faith.
In the first, we see Naaman, an officer in the Syrian army, and therefore a foreigner, who comes to the land of Israel to be healed of leprosy by Elisha, the prophet of God. After his healing, he wants to reward the prophet, but Elisha refuses, because he knows full well that he is in no way the author of this healing. He has only served as an intermediary for God's action. So the Syrian asks to be allowed to take some soil from Israel home with him so that he can worship the God of Israel.
In the Gospel, we see ten lepers healed—healed because they believed. All ten believed and were therefore healed by their faith, yet only one thought to return to give thanks. Like Naaman, he was a foreigner. He was a Samaritan. Luke, who is the only evangelist to offer us this account, emphasizes this fact. What interests him first is what the lepers ask for and then the words of Jesus when the Samaritan returns, whom He calls “this stranger.” This is the only time that the word stranger (allogenes) appears in the New Testament. Jesus shows great respect to this stranger, this Samaritan, for whom going to show himself to the priests of Israel made no sense. This stranger wants to prostrate himself by throwing himself down before Jesus like a servant or slave before his master, to give Him thanks. But Jesus does not accept this attitude of servitude and tells him to get up: “Get up,” he says. God, who created human beings in His image, expects them to stand upright before Him, in all their dignity as sons and daughters of God.
These two stories, the one from the Book of Kings about Naaman the Syrian and the one from the Gospel, can also serve as a good opportunity for us to question our attitude toward “strangers,” remembering that Jesus Himself came to us as a stranger. Moreover, each of us is Naaman, and each of us is one of the lepers healed by Jesus. Are we the one who came back to give thanks, or one of the other nine?
If we know ourselves at all, we know that we are all wounded beings. We all carry our burden of wounds. These wounds can be superficial, or they can be deep. They can be physical, psychological, or spiritual in nature. We may have been wounded during our childhood, or as young adults, or later in life. We have experienced various kinds of failure in our lives. And, on top of all that, we obviously have the wounds of our sins.
Jesus offers us healing for all these wounds. In reality, we do not have to wait for Him to come and perform a miracle in us, because we all have within ourselves a power capable of healing all our wounds. This healing power that we carry within us is Christ dwelling in our hearts. This healing power needs to be released, activated; and it is activated by faith. Faith is produced during a personal encounter with Christ Himself or sometimes with a messenger of Christ, a prophet.
John Henry Newman, in his book The Grammar of Assent, when speaking of the assent of faith, makes an important distinction between conceptual (or “notional”) assent and real assent. One can give one's full assent to all the “truths” taught by the Church but not have a real relationship of faith with God. Conversely, it is possible, even without knowing the teaching of the Church or being able to adhere to it intellectually, to have a real relationship of faith with God.
Not only must we be attentive to recognizing the messengers that Jesus sends us, but we are all called to be prophets to one another, as Elisha was to Naaman, and thus called to be sources of faith and healing for one another.
In reality, this grace of healing comes so often in our lives that we often do not pay enough attention to it. Like the nine lepers in the Gospel, we forget most of the time to come back and say “thank you” and offer God our praise and adoration.
During this Eucharist, let us give thanks to God for becoming, in Jesus, the healer of all our ills and wounds, and for delivering us from our sins. Let us also ask Him, who made Himself a stranger among us, to give us attitudes of compassion towards all strangers or refugees among us.
Armand Veilleux