Charles

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.

Reflections on the Twenty-seventh Sunday in OT: Habakkuk 1:2-3;2:2-4, 2 Timothy 1:6-8,13-14, Luke 17:5-10 “Lord, increase our faith!”, the Apostles’ request in today’s Gospel sounds so familiar and relatable, doesn’t it? It is a prayer we have all likely uttered from the depths of our hearts. When we are confronted with the chaos of the world, the weight of our own struggles and challenges, the difficulty to forgive, the loss of a dear one, etc., we know, intuitively, that our own strength is not enough. We need more faith, more grace, more power. From our experience then, the Apostles’ request seems certainly justified and holy. However, Jesus’s response is startling. He doesn’t tell his apostles, “Of course! Here you go. Your faith is now doubled”. He does not hand them a heavenly measure of faith. Instead, he immediately reframes their request: “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” Jesus’ response reveals that the disciples’ prayer, while well-intentioned, is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. They are thinking of faith as a quantity. They believe their problem is that they don’t have enough of it. They want a larger portion. To Jesus, however, the problem isn’t the amount; it’s the quality and the application. Faith is not a passive object or possession that we could accumulate. It is an active, potent force that, even in the smallest dose, contains unimaginable potential. The mustard seed was proverbial in Jesus’s time for its tiny size. Yet, it grows into a great tree. The power is not in the seed itself, but in the life within it. Similarly, the power of faith does not reside in the intensity of our feeling, but in the truth and faithfulness of God in whom we place our trust. The question is not “Do I have enough faith?” but “Is my faith, however small, alive and active? Does it inspire me to surrender myself to God for whom nothing is impossible?” This redefinition is crucial because it shifts the focus from our own internal capacity to God’s infinite capability. It saves us from a cycle of anxiety, constantly taking our own spiritual temperature, wondering if we have “enough faith” to be saved, to be effective, to get through our trials. Jesus breaks our tyrannical obsession with quantifying our faith, shifting the focus from the ‘quantity of our faith’ to its ‘quality and object’. In the first reading, Prophet Habakkuk cries out to God from a context of sheer terror and violence: How long, O LORD? I cry for help but you do not listen! This is the cry of a faith that feels small, overwhelmed by the world’s evil. God’s answer is not a quick fix. It is a call to steadfast trust: “the vision still has its time… if it delays, wait for it… the just one, because of his faith, shall live.” Faith, even mustard-seed faith, is what sustains us in the terrifying darkness, allowing us to wait for the Lord’s salvation. Paul, writing to Timothy from prison, echoes the same truth. He tells his disciple to “bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.” He calls not for a faith that removes hardships, but one that gives us the strength to endure them with Trust. Jesus narrates the challenging parable of the master and the servant, which may seem harsh to our modern ears. The dynamic behind their relationship appears to be exploitative, unjust and oppressive. After a long day of work in the fields, the servant is still required to prepare supper, serve his master, and then think about eating or drinking himself. There is no gratitude, reciprocity, dignity, or fairness. The parable is not meant to be a manual for human employer-employee relationships but a radical theological metaphor for our posture of faith before God. To Jesus, the only true yardstick of the quality of our ‘unquantifiable faith’ is the willingness to serve. We are called to become servants who seek not glory, self-sufficiency, or admiration. Faith is to assume the existential posture of selfless service centred on God. The life of faith is not about waiting for God’s congratulations. We do not do our duty to earn God’s love or spiritual accolades. Instead, we serve because we have already been loved and redeemed. Our service is not a transaction for grace; it is a response of gratitude. Let our faith shine through our posture of selfless service.

Partagez vos idées dans les posts et les commentaires. Vous pouvez ajouter des GIF, des vidéos, des #hashtags et plus encore. Commencez en postant un commentaire ci-dessous.

Nous aimerions mieux vous connaître. Prenez un moment pour vous présenter à la communauté, via les commentaires.

Nous souhaitons que tout le monde puisse profiter au mieux de cette communauté. Nous vous demandons donc de lire et de suivre ces règles : Respectez les membres Partagez des posts en lien avec le sujet du forum Ne publiez pas de spams