Today's Lepers

The Sunday Gospel speaks about 10 lepers who come asking for physical healing and they do receive from the saviour and redeemer of the world. He shows that he has come for the lowly and rejected, for those who have no name and face. All of them receive healing but only one comes back to express his gratitude. Jesus appreciates his gesture and grants him the gift of slavation. The other nine only receive the physical healing and miss the very much needed salvation,. That is the reason why he asked about the other nine, not to scold or get angry but to give them more.

Today's Lepers are those who are suffering persecution on the account of religion and creed, those who suffer because of corruption, those who meet injustice, those young girls who are raped and sold for prostitution. But some one is responsible for all these Lepers who are socially and economically trageted by the so called movers and shakers of the society. How many of them even today are separated because of some mistake or sin? How many are ostracised because they don't belong to our class and group?

Can we offer both healing and salvation these people? The following reflection i came across in one of the homily sites. 

Reflections

1. The story of the ten lepers raises one question "Why the other nine lepers did not return to give thanks and praise to Jesus?" Try to search in your heart to come up with an answer.
2. Thanksgiving is a dominant note in Jesus' prayers. You can see the joy in the Samaritan leper and the salvation he has gained. Have you experienced the joy and the salvation whenever you say thanks or praises to the Lord?
3. Glorifying God is a way to say thanks to Him. A Marian gratitude filled with wonder "The Mighty One has done great things for me and Holy His Name" is a good example to follow. How often do you praise God for what He has done for you, including the ones you appreciated and the ones you did not expected to happen
4. 

4.      There is a very obvious lesson that we are opened up to as we listen to today's scriptures. We know well the Gospel story about the 10 lepers and how only one came back to give thanks. That reminds us, of course, that we need to be people who are grateful, who are thankful. As we listen to that incident, we probably wonder, "How often do we remember to give thanks to God?" There are many reasons to give thanks, of course.

Paul tells Timothy in the second lesson today that the word of God is not chained up; the word of God has been proclaimed by Jesus and still is proclaimed in our midst. How often do we remember to thank God for this gift? The very word of God comes to us, especially each Sunday as we celebrate the liturgy, but also any time we pick up the book of the scriptures. As Paul says at the end of the lesson, even if we are unfaithful, God always remains faithful. God never gives up on us. How often do we thank God fo