Twenty-eighth Sunday Ordinary

Jesus is passing through Samaria. Usually when the Jews leave Galilee for Jerusalem, they avoid taking this route, but Jesus takes it quite a few times in the gospels. Ten lepers are walking along the same road. They are careful not to approach the city limits because they are considered unwelcome. They are considered unclean.

Among the ten lepers nine are Jews and the remaining one is a Samaritan. What business have the nine Jews to do in Samaria? We know that Jews and Samaritans avoided each other (John 4: 9). But they are here together because these are ten wretched men who have been excluded from the society two times: disfigured by their disease, they have run away from their country; considered to be a source of defilement, they have been banned, in the name of religion, from entering into any village, market or synagogue. That is why they all have come to live in Samaria, this territory whose inhabitants are excommunicated from the Jewish people (John 4: 9).

And they spy Jesus on the road walking with his disciples, and something stirs within them. They cry out, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us” (Luke 17: 13). They remain at a distance. They follow the law that forbids them from getting near anyone. They cry out their misery, but they cry out also the little faith that they have in the One who can cleanse them from their impurity. Jesus is unafraid. He approaches these unwelcome souls and says, “Go and show yourselves to the priest,” implying a re-immersion into the life of the community. Only priests were entitled to certify if anyone had been cured of leprosy (Leviticus 14: 2).

Among the ten there is one person who is different from the others, and that is a Samaritan, an outsider. Misfortune had brought the ten men together and created a great solidarity among them, but when cured they are no more ten lepers, they are now nine Jews and one Samaritan. The nine Jews must leave the country of Samaria to show themselves to their own priests, and so they go away.

On their way, all the ten are cured. Nine receive the gift of cleansing, but one receives the gift of healing, says St. Luke. And that one is a Samaritan, an outsider, doubly unwelcome. The Samaritan heads back to Jesus to give thanks. He bows down to the ground in an attitude of humble gratitude.

There is a part of mystery in every healing. And that mystery is that the infinite distance that separates us from God has been spanned in Christ. That is why the cry of the lepers is echoed in our liturgy day after day: “Lord, have mercy!” “Christ, have mercy!” “Lord, have mercy!”

Luke makes a distinction between getting cured and getting healed. Nine were cured physically. The Samaritan was healed spiritually that brought him an inner wholesomeness because of which he acknowledges this fundamental need to give thanks to God. Besides, that is precisely what we do every weekend when we come to the Sunday liturgy.

Pope Francis says, like the lepers, all of us need inner healing to be freed from fear, vices, addictions, from attachments to gain, money, television, smart phone, and what other people think. All what God wants us to do is to cry out from the heart, “Lord, have mercy on me.” And when we receive that touch of mercy, this ocean of thanksgiving is opened up as a pure sacrifice of praise. And we can term this, “Eucharistic healing”.

By going back to Jesus, the Samaritan shows that he had understood something, that he had grasped the deeper significance of why he was first sent to the priests. He must testify to them that God has sent the Messiah into the world. The nine others have discovered an ordinary healer. The Samaritan has discovered the Saviour, the one who has come to save his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). He receives a greater blessing from Jesus, imparting the fullness of salvation. He is told, “Get up and go along your way. Your faith has saved you!” (Luke 17: 19) (1).

The nine others will have other occasions to discover their sense of gratitude, but for the Samaritan the occasion was today, somewhere on the road from Samaria to Jerusalem. Pope Francis continues, “We need to present our wounds to him and say: Jesus, I am in your presence, with my sin, with my sorrows. You are the physician. You can set me free. Heal my heart.” (Pope Francis, 1st Sunday of Lent, 2021). Amen.

(1) The grateful Samaritan joins the elite group of other non-Jewish people who have become examples of faith to the people of God: the Canaanite woman (Mark 7: 24-30), the Roman centurion (Luke 7: 1-10), the good Samaritan (Luke 10: 30-37) and the royal official of Cana (John 4: 46-54).

(See Tiburtius Fernandez, Homilies for Year C, Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, © St. Paul’s Publications, Bandra, Mumbai, India, 2024, pp.236-242).