THE BLESSING OR THE BLESSER

Reflections on the Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time: 2 Kings 5:14-17, 2 Timothy 2:8-13, Luke 17:11-19

We meet two interesting foreigners in today’s liturgy: Naaman, the Syrian army commander, and the anonymous Samaritan leper from the Gospel. One was a man of immense power, prestige, and wealth, a revered general in the service of a king. The other was a man of absolutely no standing, a member of a despised community, afflicted by a disease that made him an outcast. Yet, in their profound difference, we find a brilliant similarity. Neither had a claim to the covenant of Israel, and yet both received healing and salvation precisely because of their faith. Their stories are paired to deliver one vital, unifying truth to our hearts today: God's universal call extends beyond all national, social, and religious boundaries to embrace anyone who responds with humble faith.

In the gospel, we witness Jesus granting the plea of ten lepers who cry out for healing. He gives them a simple command: “Go show yourselves to the priests.” And as they go, they are made clean. On the surface, the event is extraordinary: ten men are restored in a single moment. Yet, the Gospel directs our gaze not to the spectacle of the miracle itself, but to the interior dispositions of the ten men. Nine of them, undoubtedly overjoyed, continue on their way to the priests. This was the necessary step to be certified as clean, to be reintegrated into their families, their communities, their livelihoods. They fixed their attention solely on the gift they had received: their restored health, their return to society, the reclaiming of their former lives. Who among us can blame them? We would likely be racing down that road with them.

But one of them stops. The Samaritan, the foreigner, the one with the least reason to know the God of Israel, realises that the miracle is not merely the healing of his body, but the revelation of the boundless mercy of the Healer. His act of turning back, praising God in a loud voice, and throwing himself at the feet of Jesus was a definitive declaration that he understood what the others had missed: that the Giver is infinitely more valuable than the gift. His faith, made perfect in gratitude, was not faith in the miracle of cleansing, but faith in the person of Christ who offered it. And Jesus confirms this: “Stand up and go your way; your faith has saved you.” He was already healed; now, he is saved.

This logic of grateful return finds a powerful antecedent in the story of Naaman. Like the nine lepers who hurried away, he could have simply returned to Syria as a cured and content man. But, like the Samaritan leper, Naaman is compelled to turn back. His return to Elisha and his declaration, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel,” is the pivotal act of faith. It transforms a simple 7-time dip into the Jordan into a relationship with God. The physical cleansing was merely the catalyst for a deeper, spiritual revelation. Both stories follow this identical arc: a plea, a command, a healing through obedient trust, and then, the crucial return. The returned leper glorifies Jesus; Naaman pledges allegiance to the God of Israel. Both characters demonstrate that authentic faith is not satisfied with the gift alone but is driven by gratitude to seek, know, and worship the divine Giver.

We are all, in a sense, the nine lepers. We are the recipients of an endless stream of gifts from God: our lives, our health, our families, our daily bread. And like them, we can be so focused on the gift, on managing the blessing, on simply getting on with our lives, that we forget to turn back. We forget that the primary purpose of every blessing is to reveal the heart of the Blesser. The call today is to become the one who returns. To cultivate the spirituality of the Samaritan, the faith of Naaman. It is to develop the habit of grateful return, to continually turn back to God throughout our day, not just with a hurried “thanks,” but with a heart that recognises that God is the source of every good thing. For it is in that turning back, in that posture of grateful humility, that we move from being merely healed to being truly saved. Let us be the ones who turn back.