In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Dear father, brothers and sisters:
In today’s Sunday Gospel reading we continue on into St Luke’s Gospel and hear of the miraculous healing of 10 people, 10 lepers. Although today’s Gospel is unusually a group healing, it centers on the interaction between our Lord and just one of those healed lepers, a Samaritan, rather than a member of the House of Israel, who again gives us an example of how we ought to behave. Rather than walking on, complacent over the mercy that had been bestowed upon him he turns back and gives this beautiful, personal and heartfelt thanks to the Lord for what He had done for him. Today, I would therefore like to give a homily on being thankful and will draw on a short meditation by St Theophan the Recluse on this passage.
St Theophan the Recluse starts his reflection with a stark observation –
Ten lepers were healed, but only one came to thank the Lord. Is there not generally a similar proportion of people who are grateful after receiving blessings from the Lord.
How true is this word from St Theophan. Not only is it true perhaps at a population level, but also perhaps at a personal level, that at most – we might remember to give thanks a tenth of the time, or one out of the ten times that the Lord bestows His mercy and goodness upon us. For how easy is it for us sinners, brothers and sisters, to be just like those nine lepers. To earnestly beseech the Lord for mercy, healing and help in some difficult situation or another. To ask the priest to serve special molebens for us, or to give alms, but then when the Lord gives us everything we asked for, how quickly do we move on and accept this as somehow given to us, somehow natural and somehow our right and entitlement? How quickly like those nine lepers do we just keep on walking, lost in the busyness of life and our own self-absorbed complacency, forgetting about God and the wondrous things he has granted us. How fallen and human is this exact behaviour.
Yet, as Christians we have a special calling to be thankful. The Eucharist, which stands at the very centre of our Christian life, the bloodless sacrifice of the Bread and Wine which becomes the Body and Blood of Christ, comes from the Greek word Eucharista, in Greek means ‘thanksgiving’. Christians are supposed to be a thankful people, continually giving thanks for the mercy and grace which has been bestowed upon them. Yet so often, not only do we forget to give thanks when God has granted us everything and more that we have asked for, not only this, but we then, almost instantaneously we go on to start complaining about something else and begin asking God, again and without any shame, to give yet more to us, even though we haven’t stopped to thank Him for all He has given us.
Like this one leper, like this humble Samaritan, let us thus stop amidst all the busyness of our life and turn back to God, against the tidal flow of this world pushing us to forget God and remember all that He has done for us, all the gifts He has bestowed upon us, all the prayers and hopes that He has realized.
But then St Theophan raises another scenario. What happens when we feel that God is not answering our prayers and entreaties as He did with these ten lepers? How can we give thanks in the midst of sorrows and tribulations? As St Theophan says:
You say: “But I have only sorrows, poverty, diseases, misfortunes’. Well these too are among the ways to attain eternal bliss. Be patient. Your entire life could not even be called an instant compared with eternity. Even if you had to suffer unceasingly your entire life, against eternity it is nothing; and you still have moments of consolation. Do not look at the present, ut at what is prepared for you in the future, and be concerned with making yourself worthy of that; then you will not notice the sorrows. They will all be swallowed up by unquestioning hope in eternal consolations, and your lips will never cease to utter thanks.
It reminds me of that remarkable episode in the life of St Paisios the Athonite, when the Great Martyr Euphemia appeared in his small cell on Mt Athos in the middle of the night. After ascertaining this was indeed the saint, and not some demonic illusion, St Paisios then asked the saint to recount her life in detail and he beheld each suffering she endured as vividly as if they were actually taken place before him. The saint, then asked –
“How could you stand this?!” St. Euphemia smiled and replied, “If I had known what glory the martyrs inherit in Heaven, I would have suffered even more.”
Indeed, so often it is only through our suffering that God teaches us patience, and heals us from our pride, lusts and passions. Our suffering, our illnesses, misfortunes and difficulties become the crosses upon which God brings forth Resurrection, Grace and Eternal Life.
We can also think of the life and epistles of the Holy Apostle Paul, of the suffering, afflictions, deprivations, ship wrecks, floggings, mockery and hardship that this august luminary suffered, and yet amidst all these sufferings he was constantly giving thanks. Many of you will be familiar of his oft quoted injunction from the First letter to the Thessalonians to “Pray without ceasing” and yet maybe you might be less well aquainted by the verses which precede and follow it which are just as binding and important –
Rejoice evermore. The Leader of the Apostles says, Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
In every thing, brothers and sisters, in times of plenty and of famine, in times of illness and of health, in times of poverty and of riches, in times of persecution and of peace.
Indeed, when we look back, maybe it was exactly in those times of worldly loss of fortune, the difficulties and hardships, the crosses that God sent us, that we also felt closest to Him, that made us turn to Him and pray to Him and feel His presence.
Reflecting on His new life in Christ, St Paul looking back on the prestige and status that he had lost as a Righteous Pharisee turned follower of the Galilean could only exclaim, in his letter to the Philippans –
7 But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.
8 Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,
9 And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:
10 That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;
In such a way, St Nikolai Velimirovic, looking back on his time in the terrible Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, remarked –
It was like this in the camp: You sit in a corner and repeat to yourself:
– I am dust and ashes. Lord, take my soul!
Your soul suddenly ascends to heaven and you see God face to face. But you can’t stand it, so you tell him:
– I’m not ready, I can’t, take me back there!
Then you sit again for hours and repeat to yourself:
– I am dust and ashes. Lord, take my soul!
And – the Lord takes you up again…
In short, I would give all my remaining life, if it were possible, for one hour’s stay in Dachau.
Likewise, when he was reflecting on those enemies that he had come across in his life, those that hated him, or envied him, those who tortured him, St Nikolai could write in this extraordinary prayer –
Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.
Enemies have driven me into Your embrace more than friends have. Friends have bound me to earth, enemies have loosed me from earth and have demolished all my aspirations in the world.
Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.
Enemies have driven me into Your embrace more than friends have. Friends have bound me to earth, enemies have loosed me from earth and have demolished all my aspirations in the world.
Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them. Bless them and multiply them; multiply them and make them even more bitterly against me—so that my fleeing to You may have no return; so that all hope in men may be scattered like cobwebs; so that absolute serenity may begin to reign in my soul; … ah, so that I may for once be freed from self-deception, which has entangled me in the dreadful web of illusory life.
It is truly difficult for me to say who has done me more good and who has done me more evil in the world: friends or enemies. Therefore bless, O Lord, both my friends and my enemies. A slave curses enemies, for he does not understand. But a son blesses them, for he understands. For a son knows that his enemies cannot touch his life. Therefore he freely steps among them and prays to God for them.
Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.
If we can thank God for our enemies, how much more can we thank him for our friends. If we can thank him for our crosses how much more our resurrection. If we can thank him amidst persecution, illness and suffering, how much more can we thank him amidst health plenty and fortune. In this way we can truly give thanks to God, not only for the good things we received, but also for the pain, for the suffering, the hardship and the enemies: remembering that cry of the exiled St John Chrysostom, removed from the spendour of the Imperial Capital, in humiliation and deprivation could still exclaim from his heart – “Glory to God for all things!”
It is this, brothers and sisters, that gives us Christians a peacefulness, a peace that is from above, not as the world gives, as our Lord says, but a peace that is of Christ. It is this peace which is the peace of the martyrs, a peace that no one can take away from us, that whatever befalls us, has been given by the Lord for our salvation. It was thus in this peace that St Paul could write in his second epistle to the Corinthians –
8 We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;
9 Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;
10 Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.
And so, let us always remember to stop and to thank the Lord for all He gives us, not only what we have asked for, but also what we have not asked for and so, in everything giving thanks let us seek to hear that word He spoke to that thankful Samaritan –
Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.
Amen.