Gospel of Today:  Luke 17: 11-19  Find it in your Bible, or missal, or click here for Mass Readings.

Dear Friends,

Thanks! No Thanks! How’s your Thank You muscle doing, these times? Do you exercise it a lot, or is it flabby and weak? Do days pass you by when you have forgotten to say thanks to anyone, or only said it half-heartedly, out of routine, and without much heart? We could go for weeks like that! Some people go for most of their lives without saying Thank You in any profound way to the people around them, even family. Ingratitude makes the heart grow course.

When you jump out of bed in the morning, – or crawl, or fall out of bed- do you say ‘Good God, Morning!!!!!’, or do you say ‘Good Morning, God!’ ? Is it another chore, or is it another wonderful gift? You and I can develop our muscles day after day, for saying Thanks,- thanks for this day, thanks for the people I will meet this day, thanks for clouds and sunshine, for laughter and tears, for showers and toothpaste, for food and hunger. Thank you for the wonder of my very existence! Wow! That’s some Gift!

Now meet the ten gifted people in today’s Gospel event: gifted because the disease that had made them outcasts was suddenly and wonderfully taken away from them, by that man to whom they had called out from a distance ‘Jesus, Son of David, have pity on us!’- at the top of their voices. Suddenly healed, they ran away home to their families and friends,- wouldn’t you? But one man realized the gift he had just received, and came running back, praising God at the top of his voice from the bottom of his heart.  He flung himself at the feet of Jesus, so grateful and joyful was he.

And Jesus looked at him and asked ‘were not ten made clean? Where are the other nine?’  He was saddened by their ingratitude. They grabbed what they got and then they ran,- and forgot all about saying thanks. Gross!

Could they be us? Could any one of them be me?

When did I say Thanks, this day? Like we said, ‘How’s your Thank You muscle doing, these times?’

Thanks be to God! Thanks, Ma! Thanks, Da! Thank you, brother!/sister! Thanks a million! A thousand thanks! Thanks a lot!

Thanks for the day that lies ahead. Thanks for the day that was. AMEN! Yup, indeed!

Thanks, everyone!

Fr. Seamus              seamus.devitt@redemptorists.ie

As Jesus 'set his face for Jerusalem', he had to journey south along the border of hostile Samaria.

Gospel: Luke 17:11-19. Read it for yourself, in your Bible or Missal, or click here.

It’s not nice to have our Favourite Prejudices exposed. ‘Please, may I hold on to mine?’ Jesus won’t let me! Well, today we are being challenged both about our ingratitude, and about our prejudices. Neither is comfortable territory. We are journeying through borderland territory, here.

The Context of today’s story is the continuing journey of Jesus ‘towards Jerusalem’,- towards the ‘baptism’ that he longed to be accomplished, on the Cross, at the Tomb, and in the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit. From almost the half-way mark (9:51) in St. Luke’s account of the life of Jesus, he is ‘turning his face towards Jerusalem.’  Notice these sayings of Luke:

Luke 9:51 ‘As the time drew near for him to be taken up, he resolutely turned his face towards Jerusalem’.  ‘As they travelled…’ (9:57)   ‘In the course of their journey…’ (10:38)  ‘Through towns and villages he went teaching, making his way to Jerusalem.’ (13:22). ‘Now it happened that on the way to Jerusalem he was travelling along the border of Samaria and Galilee.’  (17:11) His journey wasn’t just geographical!

And this ‘…along the border of Samaria and Galilee’ (17:11) is the setting of today’s Gospel. A tense place to be, because of the hostility, the animosity between the Palestinian Jews and their Samaritan neighbours. Each group considered the other to be heretical, and despised the other.  Sounds familiar? Jesus didn’t recognize such borders;- for him, each person and each group was hugely important, and he despised nobody whatever. Still holds true, for him if not for us.

And maybe that was the real ‘leprosy’ that he encountered,- that despising of one another.

The ten lepers, outcasts, unclean, had to keep their distance from others. No mixing please! Keep away! And that’s how they had to live their lives each day,- kept out. But when they see Jesus passing by,- ‘on the way to Jerusalem’ and all that Jerusalem would do to him,-  they call out ‘Jesus! Master! Take pity on us!’ And Jesus did. He told them to go off and do what was usual when a person was cured of their skin disease,- ‘Go, show yourselves to the priests!’ In other words, you are already healed of your disease.

They were so excited at their healing that they went to their friends and families,- but forgot who had healed them. Except that one. He came running back to say a huge ‘Thank You Jesus!’ And who was he? A Samaritan, of all people,- one of the Despised. The real Outsider as far as the Jews were concerned, at that time.

When we see someone whom we despise or look down on, doing a really good deed, like saying such Thanks,  it upsets our prejudices. (Remember that other story also of ‘the Good Samaritan’?) People can be full of a goodness that we refuse to see or acknowledge. We prefer to hold on tight to our prejudices towards certain people. But Jesus challenges his hearer’s prejudices, then and now.

The man ‘turned back praising God at the top of his voice and threw himself at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. The man was a Samaritan’.  And Jesus commented to his Jewish hearers ‘No one has come back to give praise to God except this foreigner.’

We have ‘borders’ in our hearts, for In and Out, Us and Them. Jesus doesn’t. Jesus praises the Them, to Us! And the Us to Them! And maybe it’s We who have that leprosy, that disease that’s more than skin-deep, the disease of despising or closing out, or giving the old shoulder, to certain other people and groups. And the disease of not being grateful.

‘Jesus! Master! Take pity on us!’ 

And when he does, and heals our hearts, we turn back praising God at the top of our voices from the bottom of our (healed) hearts! And that’s livin’ !

‘Jesus!  Master!  Take pity on us!’ – our daily prayer when we bring our hearts and homes and communities and world to him.

And he will.

‘There are thirty layers to every story, and a Rabbi can only show you one layer.’ (A Jewish saying.)

‘Change the names, and the story is about yourself’ (Horace). Share it with a friend or two.

Fr. Seamus.  seamus.devitt@redemptorists.ie

Readings for this Sunday: First Letter to Corinthians, Chapter 11, verses 23-26, and Gospel of Luke, Chapter 9, verses 11-17. Click here for Mass Readings.

SOUL FOOD FOR YOUNG ADULT COMMUNITIES,- of 2 or 3 or many!

Dear Sinead, Mark and Friends,

First, greetings and thanks to all the Transition Year Students from St. Gerard’s in Bray, who graced us here in Esker for three days during this past week. You were a joy to be with, lads and girls! Thanks for coming. Best of wishes for the summer and beyond.

Passing on what has been given to us...

Ever play ‘Pass the Parcel’? You try to receive it first, and then pass it along without dropping it. Well, that’s a bit like what Paul, the Apostle, is doing today, when he talks to us (to the Christians of Corinth, then, but to us, now!). He talks about the ‘tradition’ he had received, – and the word ‘tradition’ comes from the Latin for passing along what you have received.

In a famous passage about Eucharist, he

'Take and eat...'

tells us this: ‘This is what I have received from the Lord and in turn passed on to you, that on the same night that he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread, thanked God for it, broke it and he said ‘This is my body which is for you; do this as a memorial of me’. “

Here is Paul, the Apostle, carefully ‘passing the parcel’, without dropping any of it. And it has been passed on to us in our generation, in whatever country of the world we find ourselves in,- Australia, Canada, Ireland, Germany, Fiji, anywhere. We in our generation are asked by the Lord Jesus to

Every time we eat...we proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.'

‘do this in memorial of me’,- to take the blessed bread, to break it, to share it, and to eat of it together, remembering what Paul also passed on to us that ‘every time you eat the bread…you are proclaiming’ the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus for us.

And that’s why we have this special Feast this weekend,- the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ’, – because this ‘parcel’ passed on to us contains a wonderful gift,- the body and blood, the real presence, of the Lord Jesus among us and in us. And the Greek for a ‘wonderful gift’ is Eu-Charis! And in Greek today, ‘Thank you’ is Ev-Charistó, or Eu-Charistó! It reminds us of our Thank You in the Irish language,- a thousand thanks, or míle buíochais, or go raibh míle maith agat!

At our Eucharist, or our Mass, we sing a thousand thanks! We make a song and dance about the death of the Lord for the world, (including each one of us, personally), and

...at our quietest Mass, he offers himself to us...

about the fact that he is truly alive and present in our midst ‘when you gather in my name’. It is He who gathers us around him, to remember his life, his death and his aliveness with us. Whenever we eat…we proclaim!

Let your feet be dancing with joy in God your Saviour!

Even at the quietest Mass, we truly celebrate and receive the body and blood of the Risen Lord,- we receive the Lord himself into our community, our relationships, our persons. WOW! That’s our Feast, today.

Talk with one friend or more about this. Wrestle with it. And celebrate it, by going together to a Mass somewhere that speaks to your hearts. Enjoy!

Fr. Seamus.            seamus.devittcssr@gmail.com

Seamus Devitt C.Ss.R.  seamus.devitt@redemptorists.ie