Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time / Msgr. Owen F. Campion
The Sunday Readings
The Second Book of Kings furnishes this weekend with its first Scriptural reading at Mass.
The two books of Kings once were one volume, but as time passed editors divided the volume into two parts.
They are among the historical writings in the Old Testament. As the name implies, they are interested in the careers of the early kings of Israel. However, the Old Testament is not primarily about history or, in a certain light, about kings.
Instead, the Old Testament books are concerned with religion, and more precisely with the relationship between God and all the Hebrew people.
In the view of the ancients, the most important question in life was how to live in faithfulness to God. Nothing else mattered.
While the kings are prominent in these books, religious figures also are much in evidence.
This weekend’s reading is an example. The central personality is not a king, but rather Naaman.
Two strikes are against Naaman. He is a Gentile and leper. It was much more than a coincidence of birth, religious choice or bad luck when it came to health. In each case, it indicated estrangement from God and of affliction’s presence as a result of sin.
Naaman bathed in the Jordan River, the stream that formed the boundary between the Promised Land, which was overflowing with life, and the foreign world, which was filled with treachery and death so those who acknowledged God did not live there.
Despite everything, Naaman was cured. He went to thank God, represented by Elisha, the prophet.
For its second reading, the Church turns to the Second Epistle to Timothy.
As in recent weeks, the epistle reassures and challenges Timothy, an early convert to Christianity, disciple of Paul and a bishop.
If anyone truly dies with Christ by dying to sin, then everlasting life with God is the reward.
St. Luke’s Gospel provides the last reading.
“Leprosy” occurs throughout the Scriptures, and was obviously a chronic, progressive disease and then without any known cure. It was a fearful fate.
Unaware of the workings of diseases, ancient Jews saw a curse from God in leprosy. Somehow, somewhere, the leper had disobeyed God.
Fearing contagion, communities forced lepers to live apart. Lepers could have no communication whatsoever with those people who were “clean” of leprosy.
Isolated, lepers were unproductive. They were forced to live lives of want to the point of starvation.
This reading also has an ethnic component. Jews scorned Samaritans because long ago they had tolerated pagan invaders and intermarried with pagans, producing offspring that grievously compromised the identity of the people chosen by God.
Much bigotry entered the picture. Jews thought that Samaritans were the worst of the worst, incapable of anything good.
Important here is the fact that Jesus heals and forgives. These actions belonged to God alone.
Reflection
Presumably Jews, of God’s special people, nine of the lepers cured in this story from St. Luke’s Gospel tended to see themselves as entitled to God’s mercy and forgiveness.
However, the 10th leper, the Samaritan man, had a clearer insight. He realized that he deserved nothing special. His ancestors had walked away from God.
Yet, Jesus cured him and forgave him because of the Samaritan’s faith. Thus, this leper hurried to thank Jesus.
By sinning, we all have deserted God. We properly should be the victims of what we have done.
However, with an unending love, as in the case of Naaman or the Samaritan leper, God cures us of the weakening effects of our sin, restores us to life and welcomes us into the fold of those loyal to God.
However, the keys to this happening are our own humility and our will to seek God. †