The story of the 10 lepers is a description of lost and corrupt mankind, our redemption and the one thing most necessary for our continued healing and intimate relationship with God.
The 10 lepers are on the outskirts of the town, far away, crying out for help. Leprosy analogously means for us the stench of sin which separates us from the righteousness of God, also depicted by their being outside of town. Man is separated from God and absolutely trapped in his sin. They are on the border of Samaria (the unclean foreigners) and Galilee (the land of the people of God), a mixed place. The situation of man’s sin is mixed, it’s not all bad. They are impure and sinful by leprosy, but they cry out to God for mercy—showing faith. This faith itself is purity of heart.
Jesus tells them to show themselves to the priest, and as they went they were made clean. Jesus tells us to go show ourselves to the priest in confession, and as we go we are made clean.
Then one of the ten, only one, a tithe of the group, returned to Jesus, fell on his
face and gave thanks. Where are the nine Jesus asked? “No one but you, a Samaritan and a stranger, has returned to give Glory to God. Arise, your faith has made you whole.”
There are many different lessons we could focus on, but I want to focus our
attention on what I said a above, the lesson taught to us in this story which is the one thing most needful for our continued healing and intimate relationship with God. I think there is one lesson in this story which depicts the cosmic problem which exists between Man and God. It was the foundation of Adam’s relationship with God in Paradise, the thing he forsook which plunged him and all of us into misery and death. It is quite frankly the thing that most people confess most regularly as something they do not do very well. It is the cure for all our ills, the spring of hope, the rule of faith, the means to acquire a pure heart; it is what attracts the Grace of the Spirit and fills us with joy even in
the midst of a troubled life.
The problem is forgetfulness of God. The solution is mindfulness of God. The Problem is ingratitude. The solution is thankfulness.
Sounds like a toddler lesson. Make sure to tell your teacher thank you. And yet this is at the very root of all our problems, and it is the very foundation of all our healing and potential joy. It is also the primary point of the story of the healing of the ten Lepers.
The human person created in the image of God is a mystery. And at the very center of the human person in the hub of our being is the nucleus of that mystery: it is the human will, it is the seat of desire. It is the aspect of our person which hungers for something above and outside of ourselves. We are contingent beings, we are not self-contained and self-generating. We are not our own source of life; rather, we have received our existence from another, and this fact is the cause of our desire. It is the capacity for desire which tethers us to God and draws us up into sweet communion with Him. The hunger and longing is our expression of love and trust.
The way desire functions in our person determines whether we are drawn up into God or repel Him and are pulled into a dark and unholy abyss of nothingness. The deceiver struck at the seat of desire in the Woman in Paradise to draw her away from God. “She saw that the fruit was good for food and she desired it.” Man and woman wanting to know good and evil really means they wanted to determine for themselves good and evil; they wanted to be their own self-generating source of life.
When man’s desire turned away from God and towards something temporal and created the God given engine of the human being, the mystery of the will and seat of desire in man was darkened, twisted, and broken, but not totally depraved. Ever since that primordial sin man has become a mix, a moral ambiguity, a paradox, doing the things he does not want to do and unable to do the thing he wants to do. Longing for God but lusting for the world, ready to offer himself but overcome with greed. Knowing that God is out there but unable to find him.
In the story, 10 were healed but only one remembered God and turned back to
give thanks. Jesus says his faith made him whole. What about the other nine—were they not made whole? They were healed in body but not made whole, and there is a big difference. The rain falls on the Just and the unjust, and many in this life will experience some measure of the grace and healing of God by virtue of the Cross of Christ, but in the end will not be made whole. Christ has died for all, and all men will be raised on the last day, but not all will be raised to everlasting life.
At any rate, man’s original relationship with God in Paradise was expressed and existed primarily in the desire for God which caused man to always remember God, to always be mindful of God’s presence, to always give thanks to God, to see God in everything He has made and gifted to man.
When man’s desire turned toward the temporal, which is idolatry and adultery (when you think of our relationship as a marriage), the essence of what happened and what we struggle with today is forgetfulness of God, a failure to be mindful of His presence, ingratitude, and an overall weakened desire for Him. That’s it. You want to know the grand mysteries of the spiritual life, you want to find your way out of sin and up into the light? You must struggle to practice the presence of God.
The Psalmist says: “The sinner shall borrow, and not pay again: but the just sheweth mercy, and shall give.” The sinner receives life, existence, and does not return thanks just like the 9 lepers. He is not mindful of God but goes on his way doing his business, with no thought of God. One thing that makes us different than the irrational beasts is our capacity to long for God, to search for Him, to hunger after Him. And when we fail to do so we become like the
irrational beast.
The sinner does not pay. That’s what make him a sinner: the fact that he does not pay what he owes. And what do we owe? We owe thanks to God. If you do not pay your mortgage the creditors will take your house. And if you do not give thanks to God and remember Him then you will lose your temple. Not because God is mean and vindictive—that would be to misunderstand the metaphor- but because this is ontological reality. It can be no other way. Because our sweet communion with God is reliant upon the mystery of our desire for Him, He cannot make us love Him; it is a categorical and
uncompromising reality that cannot be any other way.
The light of the body is the eye: “if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” Whose eye is evil? The one who fails to give thanks, the one who grumbles and complains, the one who does not see Christ in everything, who is forgetful of God and gives in to evil thoughts. Whose eye is full of light? The one who remembers God, who practices the presence of God, who lives in the sacrament of the present moment because they are always mindful of God and give thanks in all things.
We are explicitly told in the Scriptures the essential sin of the Jews. If you were to assemble all of their transgressions against God from beginning to end, in all their gruesome detail (and there are a great many), they all boil down to this: they forgot God, they went on with their lives without a thought for Him. They were not mindful, they were not thankful, they desired everything but God, they were adulterers.
The Psalmist tells us that those who forget God are turned into Hell. They are not moving toward life and slip away into the abyss of nothingness. David was a sinner and full of paradox, for he was a great man despite his sin. And
why? What is the source of his greatness and glory? He was a man after God’s own heart, he desired God. The desire for God purifies us from a great many things. Love covers a multitude of sins.
If we would be healed and find joy in this troubled world we must practice the presence of God by being mindful of him, praying without ceasing as the Apostle tells us. To give thanks, to curb our grumbling and complaining and to receive everything as if from God for our salvation. To receive it in patience, believing, not unbelieving, and giving thanks in all things.