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Thanksgiving Day 2022 (Gospel: Luke 17:11-19)
Some of the earliest participants in
Thanksgiving feasts in what is now the United States were living in very
difficult condition. They had reason to
be thankful for their survival.
But, then again, even dire conditions
and survival of tragedy does not bring out the best in absolutely everyone.
This was also true in the Gospel today – 10
men with leprosy are healed in an area of the Holy Land very divided
relgiouisly and politically between Israel and Samaria – between the Jewish
people and the Samaritans.
The
Samaritan Kingdom region was far away from Jerusalem. It was on the border
land, it was often it had been populated by, neighboring countries and often adversarial
neighboring peoples and tribes. The exile of the Jewish people from their
homeland started there. So there's both diversity and unrest traced to this
region.
Reading between the lines of Lukes’ Gospel,
we have reason to believe of the 10 men with leprosy who were healed, all or
most of them were in fact Jewish men living on the margins of society. But at
least one of them was a Samaritan, not a Jewish person…and it is ironic that he
– of all people – returns to give praise and thanks to God.
It is an example to the Jewish community that
Jesus has come to save all women and men, and his mercy is available to all
John 3:16 à
“For God so loved the the world that he gave his only Son so that all who
believe in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”
[__02__] Just a reminder of our history -- In September 1620, a small ship called the
Mayflower left Plymouth, England, with 102 passengers—an assortment of religious
separatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith and
other individuals lured by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the
"New World." After a treacherous and uncomfortable crossing that
lasted over 2 months, , they dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, far north
of their intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River.
One
month later, the Mayflower crossed Massachusetts Bay, where the Pilgrims, as
they are now commonly known, began the work of establishing a village at
Plymouth. (Plymouth is about 40 miles
from Boston).
Throughout that first brutal winter,
most of the colonists remained on board the ship, where they suffered from
exposure, scurvy and outbreaks of contagious disease. Only half of the Mayflower’s
original passengers and crew lived to see their first New England spring. In
March, the remaining settlers moved ashore, where they received an astonishing
visit from a member of the indigenous native American Abenaki tribe who greeted
them in English.
Several days later, he returned with another
Native American, Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe who had been kidnapped
by an English sea captain and sold into slavery before escaping to London and
returning to his homeland on an exploratory expedition. Squanto taught the
Pilgrims, weakened by malnutrition and illness, how to cultivate corn, extract
sap from maple trees, catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants. He
also helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local tribe,
which endured for more than 50 years and remains one of the only examples of
harmony between European colonists and Native Americans.
This feast of gratitude has brought people
together who might not have hoped for or prayed for such unity.
I suggest it is still an opportunity for us
to come together with family and friends…and also with those with whom we do
not get along politically or religiously or culturally.
It was also true in the Gospel…. It seemed
that Jewish rabbi would not have made much
to offer to a Samaritan leper and vice versa…
[__03__] The Samaritan leper who returns is
described as a foreigner, because the Samaritan and Jewish people were living
in different worlds / different cultures.. There
is distance in this gospel from the perspective of Jesus's travels and route
and GPS. But there's also a delay in this gospel from the perspective of the
men suffering from leprosy.
They've been waiting probably years, maybe
decades, for someone who will have pity on them.
Due to this long delay in healing, and their illness,
they have to maintain not only social distance, but spiritual distance.
In this Gospel, Jesus sends them to the
temple in order to end their delay, and also to close the gap. It is a
demonstration that Jesus has come to heal and save all people, even those who
are outsiders at the margin.
So to be a Samaritan and to be a leper in
Israel, made them doubly the outsiders in both distance and delay.
[__04__] From time to time, do you experience distance
and delay in your lives in your life? We come to church in order to close the
gap. We come to church to pray for family members to pray for those to whom we
are close, and to pray for those from whom we are far, whether socially,
geographically, spiritually, yes, it is true that some of us will experience
Thanksgiving Day alone apart from family and friends.
Or it may be true that while we enjoy
community and family time today, around the holidays, we may be most mostly
alone in our lives. You are not alone in the church. You're not alone at Sunday
Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes that we are called to be one family to support each
other.
And one example of that is the food that you
have brought today to church to support those who are poor, those who are
living, maybe living alone or living in poverty. We might say that the
Samaritan lepers are Samaritan, those with leprosy in Samaria are being sent on
their way to the temple in a way similar to the way that you or I or as a
sinner does. penance, or practices fasting or prayer or ALMS giving as part of
forgiveness for our sins.
The penance, however, is not given for to us
in order for us to earn or deserve our forgiveness, but rather just to remind
us that we are now actively living out our forgiveness and giving thanks to
God, as the most remarkable aspect of forgiveness or reconciliation is not the
penance, but the conversion of heart, the desire and will to turn back to God,
which is a work of grace. And isn't that true? And so the healing for the
lepers is similar to an act of forgiveness after an extended delay or after a
long distance. And forgiveness has a social and interpersonal dimension.
Perhaps you've experienced the social or interpersonal aspect of, of
forgiveness. For example, imagine that you apologize to somebody whom you have
wronged or somebody apologizes to you, it's good to be back in the good graces
of the other person, it's certainly a relief. And isn't a great when someone
takes responsibility for an act of wrongdoing or when you take it out of responsibility
for act of wrongdoing and receive forgiveness. That's good. But forgiveness is
not just about pain relief, or general anesthesia, or even just about social
distance, it is so that we can know that if because forgiveness is not just
about going to sleep or resting forgiveness is about waking up and trying to
follow Jesus each day as this one of the 10 lepers has done. [__end__]
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