28th Sunday in Ordinary Time: October 11/12, 2025

There is the old saying:  the devil is in the details, but let’s adapt that a bit to say that grace, too, is in the details, because there are a few details we might miss in today’s Gospel if we aren’t paying attention  that brings added meaning to this encounter Jesus has.

Like: “As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem, he traveled through Samaria and Galilee.”

Most of us should remember that Jews who want to remain ritually pure had nothing to do with Samaritans in Jesus’s day.  It is a rift that set up a social barrier that goes back many generations.

Why, then, does Jesus venture into Samaria?  He could have gotten to Jerusalem by another way.  Remember he did this another time, ventured into Samaria, and that time encountered a sinful woman at a well and brought her to faith.

Perhaps a message that Jesus would like to give us in this detail is that he would like us to break down social barriers that exist among us and one of the best ways to do that is just to get to know those we have a rift with, instead of avoiding them at all cost. . .

And then it is interesting that among this group of lepers, outcasts because of their disease, there is one who has a double whammy, not only is he an outcast because of his leprosy, he would be an outcast because of where he was from, Samaria.

But misery loves company and so he is at least accepted among the lepers, as long as he remained a leper. . .

But then the cure comes and Jesus’ directive to “go show yourselves to the priests.”  Which meant going to the Temple in Jerusalem, a welcome place for the nine Jews of the crowd, but not for the Samaritan, who even though cured of his leprosy, would remain an outcast now even among those he had been hanging out with.

So there was only one logical thing for the Samaritan to do and that was to return to Jesus to thank him in person.

So what are we to make of all of this?

Notice St. Luke does not have Jesus imply in any way that Samaritans are all unclean, unacceptable, or outcast people and Jews, by nature, are not.   That’s because Jesus always accepts people as who they are and where they are at in life and, perhaps again, a stance Jesus would like for us to take. . .

Nor do I think Luke wants us to take from this story the suggestion that 90% of people are always ungrateful by nature.  This is not a social sampling with a margin of error of 10%. That would give some people permission to feel morally superior to others again, something St. Luke nor Jesus wants to encourage.

So, again,  what are we to make of all of this?

I think the take away should be the ten lepers as a group represents each and every one of us. . .

There are certainly moments when we remember to give thanks to God, and to those who gift us in some way. . . Perhaps we remember 10% of the time. But the urge to get on with the business of life is deeply ingrained in us.  Our default buttons are set to take people and life - for granted. AND it’s easy for us to think that we’ve earned life’s good things by our own initiative and our own hard work. And just as Jesus was once tempted in the desert by the devil  so the evil one can tempt us with the self-delusion that we can and deserve to have it all.  It can be ours because we deserve it.

Years ago there was an ad for Mercedes Benz on television you may remember it.  The tag line was “Get the Mercedes you deserve.” The more I thought about it, the more I realized that, if it’s all the same I would rather have the Mercedes, or whatever car I wanted rather than thinking I can have the car I deserved. b And it also occurred to me that even if I got the car I wanted  it would never be enough. . .  I would always want more because one want tends to breed more wants and there’s no end to the wants once we get started. . .

On this day on which we hear this Gospel for what would we thank God and one another? Perhaps we should give thanks for the periodic reminder that the universe is not entirely about ourselves. . .  Life is not just about an over-sufficiency of food and luxury goods.

Life is not just about the difficult first-world problems that you and I confront in the affluent society we live in others struggle just to stay alive. So today, we would do well to thank Jesus as did the Samaritan leper.  Why the nine others could so quickly forget what Jesus had done for them is beyond me but it should not be that way with us.

Regardless, it was the Samaritan who experienced the healing presence of Jesus as he walked away from Jesus like the others.  But what the Samaritan experienced, we too experience, because Jesus heals us as he walks with us on our journey of life.

Today, perhaps we should pray in gratitude for the eyes we have to see Christ walking beside us, and the ears to hear Christ speaking through the people around us.

And maybe, too, we should give thanks for the strength of this community as we continue walking with our brothers and sisters on our life’s journey until the day we see Jesus face to face.

As we heard Pope Leo state last week: “God loves us, God loves us all and evil will not prevail therefore without fear, and with total trust in God” and here let us add with gratitude in our hearts, “united hand in hand with God and each other let us go forward in peace.”