Memorial of Saint Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr
Today’s Gospel reading offers us another characteristic of our Lord’s heart in which we can participate: a spirit of thanksgiving, presented to us through this story of the ten lepers. Imagining Jesus’s tone of voice, we might note a sense of bewilderment as he says, Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God? After all, thanksgiving is a key element of Israel’s Psalms, which exhort us, Give thanks to the Lord, invoke his name; make known among the peoples his deeds! (Psa 105:1).
In a certain sense, one can even summarize Jesus’s whole life as offering thanksgiving to the Father in the Spirit. This, after all, is one way of understanding what we do in the Eucharist (from the Greek word for thanksgiving), when we unite ourselves to the great thanksgiving sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. It is no wonder, then, that Jesus would be bewildered and dismayed by those who have no thought to thank God for his blessings.
Let us pray today, then, for this spirit of thanksgiving which marks our Lord’s heart and which in a certain sense summarizes his whole life-offering. Guided by the Spirit, let us recognize the goodness of the Lord in our own lives and unite our own thanksgiving to the great thanksgiving of Christ, who lives for all eternity.