Our Faith is in Christ, Not in the Church

Gospel Reflection for October 12, 2025 - Luke 17:11-19

And it came to pass, as he 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, shew yourselves to the priests. And it came to pass, 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. (Luke 17:11-19 DRA)

The Gospel reading for today, though written in the form of a historical narrative instead of a parable as in last week’s passage, is similarly suffused with symbolic meaning. Both pertain to the topic of faith: previously Christ taught us that true faith is humble, like that of a servant fulfilling his duties to his Master. Now He illustrates another aspect of the theological virtue of faith: the Church is the instrument of faith, not its proper object and end, which is God alone.

Intriguingly, the Samaritan could be called disobedient to Christ for his actions. Christ explicitly commanded the lepers to go and show themselves to the priests, which the other nine presumably did after they were healed, whereas the Samaritan failed to proceed to the priests and instead returned to gift thanks to Christ for healing him. Yet Our Lord does not correct his apparent disobedience but instead rebukes the other nine lepers for their ingratitude and their lack of faith, which not only healed the Samaritan as it did the others but also “made thee whole,” in body and spirit.

This narrative demonstrates the aforementioned point Our Lord is making about the virtue of faith in today’s reading. The priesthood is indeed necessary, in ordinary circumstances – otherwise God wouldn’t have instituted it under Moses and Christ wouldn’t have commanded them to go to the priests in the first place – but its necessity is entirely dependent on God. If its God-given authority is disconnected from its Source, then it loses its efficacy, just as the Eucharist received unworthily is received only in body, not in spirit, and thus is hindered from imparting its sanctifying effects. Nor is God limited by the participated authority He lends to His human subjects; like St. Dismas crucified beside Our Lord on Calvary, Christ can infuse His divine life and sanctifying grace into any soul He deems worthy of it, with or without their reception of the Sacraments. St. Dismas, like the Samaritan, had true faith in Christ, and this faith made them whole.

But this argument could seem to advocate for the Protestant view of sola fide or faith alone: if God can give grace to whomever He likes, and faith is what’s really necessary to receive it, why do we need the Church? This can also be answered by today’s reading. Christ was not tricking or deceiving the lepers when He told them to present themselves to the priests, and it should be noted that they were healed not immediately, or even when they returned to Christ, but rather when they obeyed His command and went on their way to the priests.

The sacraments and priesthood of Israel were instituted by God as the ordinary means by which He distributes grace to His Church. Likewise, as St. Augustine makes clear, “the Jewish priesthood was a figure of that priesthood which is in the Church.” (Catena Aurea) This means that the new priesthood of the apostles, which Christ instituted to replace and fulfill the Mosaic priesthood of the Temple and which the apostles handed down to the bishops and priests of the Church, is equally necessary in ordinary circumstances as the priesthood to whom Christ sent the lepers. This is why St. Cyprian of Carthage famously taught, “He cannot have God as Father who does not have the Church as Mother,” and, “there is no salvation outside the Church.”

Even so, in both instances – for the lepers two millennia ago and for Christians today – our faith is in Christ and only mediately or instrumentally in His Church, insofar as it is His Mystical Body and the ordinary means by which we are adopted as children of God and incorporated into Him, enabling us to be conformed to the perfect and divinized humanity which He assumed and has made available to all through His Passion, Resurrection and Ascension. The Samaritan understood this: he may still have gone to the priests, after returning to thank and glorify Christ, but he had his priorities straight and knew that the true Source of grace, healing and salvation is not the humans who currently make up the Church, in his time or today, but God Himself. St. Augustine thus warns,

Whoever then follows true and sound doctrine in the fellowship of the Church, proclaiming himself to be free from the confusion of lies, as it were a leprosy, yet still ungrateful to his Cleanser does not prostrate himself with pious humility of thanksgiving, is like to those of whom the Apostle says, that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, nor were thankful. (Rom. 1:21.) (Catena Aurea)

For this reason, as Catholics and in our understandable eagerness to counter the antiecclesial errors of the Protestants, we should also be careful not to turn the human, earthly aspect of the Church into an idol. The current pope, bishops, priests, religious and laity are like the matter of the Sacraments: important, even necessary most of the time, but still only matter. The true form of the Church, the object of our faith, hope and charity and the Source of divine life is Christ, and we receive Him through the Tradition – apostolic and ecclesiastical – of the Church. This is the truth we should all cling to, not to the transitory words of non-infallible documents, interviews, personal books, disciplines, etc. from the clergy, which are only good and useful insofar as they are in continuity with Tradition and lead us closer to Christ. It may thus be said that our faith is in God alone and only “by” or “through” the Church, not in the Church for her own sake apart from Christ.

But for all the good that we receive, and even for the evils that God in His Wisdom and Providence allows us to suffer, we should imitate the Samaritan and fall down on our faces before Our Lord in gratitude, recognizing that apart from His grace we deserve nothing but damnation, yet if we will only accept His infinite love, He will give us everything.

---

Join the Fellowship at Saint Tolkien!