The story about the ten lepers is paired in the lectionary with the condensed version of the story of Naaman the Syrian. It’s one of those combinations that makes it clear that although there are some crucial new things happening in the ministry of Jesus, there is also a great deal that stands in continuity with the ministry of the Old Testament prophets. Here in particular we see in stark terms both the ingratitude of God’s own people and the receptivity of the Gentiles to God’s saving work. As one fourth-century writer describes it, strangers were more ready to receive the faith than Israel (Titus Bostrensis, quoted in Thomas’ Catena aurea).
Israel is supposed to be the light to enlighten the nations, a sign to the peoples of God’s goodness. Yet so often Israel is a sign of contradiction as well: a sign of humanity’s failure to acknowledge its divine vocation. This too, we should observe, is part of God’s good providence, for Israel’s failure is thus turned to a good end, to show how God is able to be faithful despite our unfaithfulness—as St. Paul puts it in 2 Timothy, “he cannot deny himself”—and how even this sign of failure can be transformed as a witness to the nations. Likewise the Church, figured, according to the tradition of the Fathers, in the ten lepers, is a sign of failure, for though her members are washed and made clean in the sacramental waters of baptism, they more often than not fail to accept with gratitude the new life offered.
Beyond these layers of reading, there is also a present reality that we can observe in Catholic life, which is how often those “strangers”—whether Protestants or non-Christians or whatever—seem more grateful for the gift of the Catholic faith than those who have known it all their lives. What’s more, the zeal and gratitude of these strangers, at times, get ridiculed and marginalized by Catholics who, like those nine lepers, would rather just “get their sacraments” and move on.
If I can venture a bold observation, the existence of the Ordinariates is one place where the Church has in a way institutionalized this experience, almost as if to say, this zeal for the goods of the Church is “meet and right”; it is normal; and it would be a distortion of the gospel of grace to act as if the response of the nine ungrateful is somehow what ought to be expected simply because it is more typical. We should not be surprised when the Naamans of this world approach us looking for salvation. This is why God created Israel in the first place. It wasn’t just to make one people feel special; it was so that “all the nations of the of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 18:18). This is why the Church exists.
Whether we are Israelites or Gentiles—which is to say, cradle Catholics or converts—the point of the story in the Gospel remains that the most important thing is not how we got here, but where we are—that the Lord has healed us, that the Lord has made us one of us own. And so today’s epistle from 2 Timothy is relevant, because in it Paul exhorts us to be faithful to our calling.
If we have died with him
we shall also live with him;
if we persevere
we shall also reign with him.
But if we deny him
he will deny us.
If we are unfaithful
he remains faithful,
for he cannot deny himself.
That last bit can seem a bit contradictory, but it is meant I think to emphasize the fidelity of the Lord to his own promises. In other words, baptism is irrevocable, indelible. When he forgives your sins, they really are forgiven. When he incorporates you into his body, the Church, he really does incorporate you. The variable isn’t he, but we: our denial, our lack of perseverance, our infidelity. Or, in terms of the lepers of today’s readings, our ingratitude or our inability to recognize the gifts that we have been given, the gifts that ever stand before us, the grace constantly available in the Church through the sacraments.
Let us then strive for the enthusiasm and joy of Naaman and the gratitude of the Samaritan leper—not just to sit by and watch our healing, but to recognize that this gift is the sign of an even greater invitation to take part more permanently in the great work of God’s love.