We Grateful Lepers

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; God is One! Amen.

In today’s Gospel reading we hear the story of ten lepers, ten men who were ritually unclean,  rejected, and excluded from the community and common worship of the Temple.  They were not even allowed to come near the habitations of men, for fear that their illness would be spread, and others would come into illness, even unto death. So, who are these lepers to us?  If the Church fathers have taught us anything about the reading of scripture, it is to consider the least of these within the corpus of holy writ, and see ourselves within them.

Were we not once spiritual lepers of the faith, standing on the outside of the Church and looking in; standing apart and removed from the Holy mysteries within?  Were we not cast down, and therefore cast out, by the magnitude of our own sin?  So, like the Lepers, we stood outside, and afar off from Christ, crying for mercy: My Lord, Jesus Christ the Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.  It is a prayer that is constant on the lips of Orthodox faithful around the world; on the lips of those seeking Christ; on the lips of those seeking their salvation within the boundaries of Holy Tradition, and all of those participating in their salvation through the sacramental life and rhythm of the Church..

Christ heard the cries of the Lepers, and sent them away to the priests, that they may fulfill the Law to be ritually cleansed, so that they may be brought back into the fellowship of their community once again. Christ heard our calls and brought us into the Church, to His priests that we may be ritually cleansed and healed of our infirmities, received by Him who has already fulfilled the law.  Out there, outside the Church is the Law which brings death, but here within the Church resides the Law of the Spirit of Life, the Law that brings Life, and that law is Christ.

Christ heard our calls, yet did we hear His call when he beseeched us to go and do likewise; when he exhorted us to go and sin no more; when he beseeched us to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect; or when he commanded us to Do this in remembrance of Him?  Do we recognize, and are we grateful, thankful, of the many wounds of which we have been healed, some of us of illnesses from which we have been saved or assuaged, many of us rescued from the only life of death this world could offer; and all of us saved from the wages of sin, which is death? Are we grateful that we have received this gift of healing?  Are we thankful that we had the spiritual faculties through which to perceive and receive it?

All the lepers were healed, but only one of them returned to give thanks.  The Gospel tells us that this man was a Samaritan, one who existed outside of the Hebrew community, and had no rights within the people of Israel.  He was not just a stranger, but a reject of the Hebrew people.  The Samaritan knew this; knew that he had no right to the love which he received from God, this act of Christ, and yet he knew that he had been healed, cleansed of his consuming illness.  He was made whole once again, and knowing the undeservedness of the gift he had just received, he returned and gave thanks to Christ who told him:”Go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole.” Yet, knowing this about himself, why did he return to Christ?  Gratitude is a powerful thing and springs up in each of us more powerfully when what we have received is undeserved of us to be received, but how much more so when that which is received is a miracle of divine and human love?

What of the other nine lepers?  Perhaps they felt as though they deserved that which they received, and in their unspoken pride felt as though they had no reason to be grateful.  For, when we think we deserve something and receive it, we feel we have received that as our due.  This is a problem, not only within the world, but within the walls of the Church as well.  So many feel entitled, feel they have the right: a right to human concern, to human love, to everything within which the human condition can give us, to our relationships, to our property, and ultimately, to even God’s love for us all.   So when many receive that gift of grace there is a superficial gratefulness, a vestigial thank you, but none of it transforms our relationships to either God or to one another by returning that same mercy others have shown unto us.  It is instead received as their due, and we are grateful to those who delivered to us that which we already had the right to receive.

Do any of us really have an entitlement to the life we live, the air we breath, and the relationships we uphold through either love or selfishness?  Humanity itself exists as an act of love, created out of nothing and brought into being by the hands of a loving God.  Many of us, though not all of us, came into this world through an act of love, when two bodies became one flesh, and out of that union a new life was born.  We live because someone loved us enough to ensure our survival through a world intent on killing us in body, mind, or spirit.  We deserve nothing, yet it is through love and love alone that we have received everything.

He gave us his life, his teaching, his death, and his forgiveness, but what have we given him in return: a passive acknowledgement of his love and presence within our own lives; a sometimes cursory understanding of his teaching, or even a downright rejection if it disagrees with our own personal agendas, opinions, and personal sensibilities; our continual submission to sin and the passions of the flesh; or our lack of mercy given to our fellow man as both patience and forgiveness fails us time and time again?  He gave us our lives, so it is the least we can do but to give our lives back to him, consecrated within the sacramental life and rhythm of the Church, ever grateful for the mercy of God and those gifts which we have received, and continue to receive. 

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God…”  These are the words of Christ in His first beatitude. We must acknowledge that we are poor in spirit, for this is the fundamental condition for the spiritual growth and progress of all men.  The poor in spirit are those who know that they possess nothing which is not a gift, and are deserving of nothing which they have received.  To be poor in spirit is to be empty of all pride and the surrender of one’s self to the guiding hand of the Holy Spirit. It is to find freedom from ones own ideas, opinions and desires that would lead one away from God.  To be poor in spirit is to be liberated from the vain imaginations of one’s own heart. Ultimately, spiritual poverty is the condition of total emptiness, openness and honesty before God.  Once we have peeled away all that we have, and all that we are in the eyes of this world, standing spiritually naked before the eyes of a triune God, then we can truly be grateful, returning to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to fall upon our collective faces and giving thanks unto Him for all things.

Closing with the words of Metropolitan Anthony Bloom of blessed memory:

“Let us reflect on this; let us learn to live out of gratitude, out of the joy of being loved, out of our communion with God, but knowing that it is an act of gratuitous generosity, that we have no rights – and yet we possess all things.  Saint Paul said that: I have nothing, and I possess all things.  Each of us could be such a rich person in our utter poverty, rich with all the love and power and richness of God.

Let us reflect, and let us give God, in an act of gratitude not only spoken, not only dimly felt, but lived in every action of our life: let us give Him joy, and the certainty that He has not created us in vain, not lived and died for us in vain, that we are truly disciples who have understood and who want to live His Gospel.”

By the prayer of thy most pure Mother, the holy and God bearing fathers, all the saints, the martyrs and the angels, have mercy on us and save us.  Amen.