Gospel Reflection

13th Sunday After Pentecost - St. Luke 17.11-19

At that time, as Jesus was going to Jerusalem, He passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee: and as He entered into a certain town, there met Him ten men that were lepers, who stood afar off, and lifted up their voice, saying: Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. Whom when He saw, He said: Go, show yourselves to the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were made clean. And one of them, when he saw that he was made clean, went back, with a loud voice glorifying God: and he fell on his face before His feet, giving thanks: and this was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering said: Were not ten made clean? And where are the nine? There is no one found to return, and give glory to God, but this stranger. And He said to him: Arise, go thy way for thy faith hath made thee whole.

I have lived my life as a disciple of Jesus since I was 8 and baptized at 13 in a murky, local lake. I can’t recall ever functioning without Him. I have memories of early childhood when I was not self-conscious about His existence, worth, power, or Presence. I have memories of my family attending what I found out later was a Baptist church plant that eventually became a church and my family journeyed from one church to the next, settling finally in my high school years at an independent charismatic church. Over the years I have benefited from His consolations, His unmistakable Presence, where He makes Himself obvious and unexpected provision and blessing.

However, there have been plenty of moments of His desolation, in which His Presence is felt absent, hidden and in some cases one may feel abandoned, as if one was writing extra chapters to Job’s central complaints. I have had those moments. Several years of doubt and theological struggle kept me in a desolate place during my college years. St. Teresa of Avila warned us not to long too much for God’s consolations, for the consolations — the blessings, the “good times” which are His benefits — but they are not Him.

God is never absent. Psalm 139 makes it clear: there is no place to run from Him, no place to hide, indeed, no place in the created order where He is not. Jesus told the woman of Samaria Πνεῦμα ὁ Θεός, (“God is Spirit,” Jn 4.24). God is not “a spirit” among other spirits, or a God among other gods. As St. Thomas Aquinas says,

Now, since God is being itself (ipsum esse subsistens) by His own essence, created being must be his proper effect….Therefore, as long as a thing has being, so long must God be present to it, according to its mode of being.

The LXX renders the Hebrew (אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר אֶֽהְיֶ֑ה) of Exodus 3.14 thus, ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν, “I am Being.” God has always been present and Presence to me and to you even in the dark night of the soul. He cannot not be Present. Aquinas says further in the Summa, “We know that this proposition which we form about God when we say God is, is true; and this we know from His effects.”

What has all this to do with our Gospel? It is astounding how the nine even with the amazing gift of physical healing, having encountered BEING ITSELF, incarnate God, were not the least affected spiritually. The one who did, not only felt the Presence and the benefits, but returned by what he knew and thanked Him.

What do you thank Him for? Is it merely because of the benefits, the consolations or because of Him, Himself. The grateful leper was changed and like all disciples, want to be with Him because of Him, He Who said would neither leave us or forsake us.