Today’s readings: 2 Kings 5, 14-17; 2 Timothy 2, 8-13; Luke 17, 11-19.
Praise and thanksgiving are an integral part of living the faith. According to our logic, one thanks after having received. According to the logic of faith, praise and thanksgiving are the act of adoration which opens the heart to the Lord of life. The theme of the Scriptures today is not simply about showing gratitude to God for gifts received.
Unfortunately, to use St Paul’s concept in today’s letter to Timothy, our faith seems to be literally chained to a logic that conditions us to think of God in the likeness of a human being. Many of our celebrations are so contained and restrained that we can hardly think out of the box where our liturgies are concerned.
Our liturgies are very often chained to officialdom and rules as well as to a language that is at times too archaic. They speak to the mind and very rarely do they address the heart. “There are Christians,” writes Pope Francis in his The Joy of the Gospel, “whose lives seem like Lent without Easter”.
This is a leitmotif in Francis’ pontificate. He speaks so much of joy because joy is one of the deepest dimensions of our faith that very often is lacking. Joy is one of the fruits of the Spirit in us, it is the outcome of believing and in turn it becomes the source of deeper faith.
In today’s readings we are presented with two instances of ‘foreigners’ who rejoice in the discovery of God in their lives. Naaman, at the time of Elisha, was cured of his leprosy. He was a pagan commander of the Syrian army and it was through intermediaries that he came to know of Elisha, God’s prophet. In the gospel we read of Jesus curing 10 lepers, with only a Samaritan, again a foreigner, returning to praise and acknowledge Jesus.
In our circles, it is easy to take God for granted but then to ask “Where is God?” in the face of what shakes our foundations. According to what probably is the most recent study on faith in Malta, the book Enigmatic Faith, published by the Discern Institute in 2015, in reply to the direct close-ended question “Do you believe in God?”, an impressive 96.7 per cent of the 783 people interviewed replied in the affirmative.
Who knows what meanings believing in God might have for different people. That affirmative reply might have broad motivations, ranging from the typical cliché answer conditioned by culture or upbringing to a blanket reply that covers doubts and fears which haunt so many.
Belief in God is not simply a doctrinal issue, because God is a truth not learnt but experienced. This was St Paul’s experience which he is sharing with Timothy in the second reading and affirming that in spite of the hardships he had to go through, the Good News he carried within could never be chained.
We need to be thankful to God not because God is the touchy type if we do not show gratitude for gifts received; but because being thankful and praising Him makes us acknowledge more in depth who we are and who He is. Praise and thanksgiving keep us always in the right perspective of life, even when tribulations seem to take over.
This is the true healing that the Scriptures today highlight and which we can experience first-hand. It is not only the healing from illnesses whatsoever, but the healing within. There are many kinds of leprosy around us and within us. It can be resentment towards someone or the past we are reluctant to face. It can be jealousy or a deep sense of guilt that makes it extra hard for us to forgive our own selves.
Discovering the joy of faith and of celebrating it enlightens the heart and empowers us to name the shadows that otherwise would continue to haunt us and chain our life. We can be chained from the outside, but acknowledging God as Lord of our life will give protection and will never permit God’s news to be chained in us.