Rather than my entire homily, this week I am only posting the final five paragraphs
We give God thanks because, as our reading from 2 Timothy tells us, once we truly belong to Christ, he remains faithful even when we are unfaithful, which happens and is why we have the sacrament of penance.1 Our infidelities require us to acknowledge that we are incapable of saving ourselves and to express gratitude to God for what He has done for us through Christ. Spiritually speaking, a Christian is a healed leper.
Genuine gratitude like that expressed by the Samaritan in today’s Gospel and the Assyrian general in our first reading is the Spirit-driven response to God’s goodness. As Catholics, we adhere to the truth that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. How could we profess otherwise? Doesn’t our Lord tell the Samaritan "your faith has saved you"?2 Why would He say anything different to you or me?
Jesus with the one leper who returned to give thanks, by William Brassey Hole
Worshiping God in gratitude, not race, ethnicity, sex, or anything else, is what makes you a member of God's chosen people. While the moniker is a bit anachronistic, the reality that by his act of worshipful thanksgiving the Samaritan cured of leprosy became a Christian is not.
What ought to bring us to our knees in gratitude is our personal experience of God’s mercy given us in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is why we kneel as we say, after being told to “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world…,” using the words of the hopeful Roman centurion, “Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and soul shall be healed.”3
As our Collect, or opening prayer, asks, may God’s grace always go before and after us, making us “determined to carry out good works.”4 Good works are the result of faith that saves.5
1 2 Timothy 2:13.↩
2 Luke 17:19.↩
3 Roman Missal, The Order of Mass, sec. 132; Matthew 8:8.↩
4 Roman Missal, Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Collect.↩
5 James 2:14-18.↩
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