Thanks and Praise

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time C-2

Entrance Antiphon Ps 130 (129):3‑4 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? But with you is found forgiveness, O God of Israel.

Collect May your grace, O Lord, we pray, at all times go before us and follow after and make us always determined to carry out good works. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Scripture today: 2 Kings 5:14-17; Psalm 98:1-4; 2 Timothy 2:8-13; Luke 17:11-19

As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem, he travelled through Samaria and Galilee. As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him. They stood at a distance from him and raised their voices, saying, "Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!" And when he saw them, he said, "Go show yourselves to the priests." As they were going they were cleansed. And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan. Jesus said in reply, "Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give glory to God?" Then he said to him, "Stand up and go; your faith has saved you." (Luke 17:11-19)

Thanks and Praise Our Lord strongly encourages us to ask, and says that if we do, we shall receive. Somewhere among his many works, St Alphonsus Ligouri writes that the main reason why people do not receive from God much more than they actually get, is that they ask for so little. He goes on to say that if we do not bother to ask God for the things we really need — such as his spiritual gifts and graces — our salvation is at risk. So we should ask God for what we need, just as a child would and should ask his father for what he needs. In fact, it pleases God when we ask him, with confidence and persistence, for what in his sight we think we need. As a wonderful Father, he loves to hear our prayers and answer them in the way he knows is truly best for us. Consider our passage today, in which our Lord cures the lepers (Luke 17:11-19). The lepers stood a long way off asking our Lord to have pity on them. It was a prayer of petition to Jesus, heartfelt and full of faith, knowing he could answer their plea. Forthwith, Jesus granted their request and their healing soon followed. It is a typical example of the power of the prayer of petition in the Gospels. But then only one of the ten lepers, and he not of the Jewish faith but a Samaritan, returned praising God and falling at the feet of Jesus to thank him. “This made Jesus say, ‘Were not all ten made clean? The other nine, where are they? It seems that no one has come back to give praise to God, except this foreigner’...” Our Lord expected a response of thanks and praise from each. This shows that the prayer of thanks for blessings received is pleasing to him, together with praise for all that he is — so good, so loving, so holy. Just as every event and need can be the occasion of humbly asking God for something, so every event and need can be the reason for thanking and praising him. The saints thanked him for their very sufferings, knowing that whatever he allows is for our good. St Paul tells us to “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” We are to give thanks in all circumstances. He says it again elsewhere, “Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.”

Now, all the masters of the spiritual life lay it down that humility is the foundation thereof. It is therefore imperative that we grow in the virtue of humility if we wish to be truly religious, let alone a sincere disciple of Jesus Christ. How are we to become humble, though? An important means is to take concrete steps to grow in the spirit of gratitude, trying — as St Paul enjoins — to be constantly thankful to God for everything. The greatest prayer of thanksgiving is the Mass, at which we join with our Lord in the thanks he offers to the Father on our behalf. The meaning of the word “Eucharist” is precisely “thanksgiving.” As we think of the leper returning to our Lord and falling at his feet to thank him, let us resolve to fill up our life of prayer with thanksgiving to God. There is also the duty and the call to praise him. Praise is the form of prayer which recognises most immediately that God is God. It praises God for his own sake and gives him glory, quite beyond what he has done for us, but simply because he is what he is. He is God, and for this we praise him and give him glory. When the leper returned to fall at the feet of our Lord and thank him, our Lord’s complaint was that he was the only one to come back to give glory to God. Our Lord wanted to see his heavenly Father praised for what the lepers had received. So we ought not only thank God, but praise him. Of course, if we thank God a lot, we are disposing ourselves to praise him, and in praising God we are most united to those in heaven, for that is what they especially do. Heaven is filled with the praise of God, as it is with intercession on our behalf. Praise of God reaches its summit in adoration of him. How, then, can we grow in the ability to praise God? Our ability to praise God will grow in the measure that we are able to praise at all. Just as we could ask ourselves how often we thank others, we could also ask ourselves how often we praise them. If we learn to praise others and make it a habit, we shall grow in the ability to praise God. We ought strive to become people who are very reluctant to criticize others and prone to praise them. A person who praises a lot helps those being praised, and also develops his own capacity to praise God.

Let us often give glory and praise to God in our prayer, while also praising others, and being reluctant to criticise them. At Mass we praise God in union with our Lord. Let us resolve not only to ask God for all we need — and we must do this daily — but also resolve to fill our prayer and our entire life with thanks and praise. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit! As it was in the beginning, is now, and forever shall be!

(E.J.Tyler)

Further Reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church no. 2637-2643: (Thanks and Praise)

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A second reflection on the Gospel:

Gratitude It is very clear in today’s Gospel passage that it pleases our Lord greatly if we are grateful for his gifts, and if we praise and glorify him as a result. “Were not all ten made clean? The other nine, where are they? It seems that no one has come back to give praise to God except this foreigner.” I remember reading the story of a soldier who, as a result of a battle he was in, had to have one of his legs amputated. He was inconsolable, and was furious with everyone as a result, including God. But then shortly afterwards another soldier came in seated in a wheelchair, and he had lost both legs. But that soldier was happy, joyful to all, and grateful. He was grateful, for his life had been spared, when others had died. That was a tremendous lesson to the soldier who had lost one leg. It is often pointed out that we can look on a half-filled glass in two ways — it can be seen as half-empty, or half-full. The soldier who had lost both legs was grateful for the blessings that had been granted to him. He was alive, and enjoyed the friendship and care of others. In a parable elsewhere in the Gospel, the servant who had been forgiven ten thousand talents forgot what had been done for him and was merciless with a fellow-servant who owed him hundreds of denarii. Let us resolve to cultivate a profound recognition of what God has done in our life, like the Samaritan leper of the Gospel today. There are two ways of viewing a gift. Some, when they receive a gift, think primarily of what the gift will do for them. Others think of the love and goodness of the giver. The Samaritan leper, liberated from his leprosy, was filled with the thought of the Giver of this blessing, and returned to thank and render honour to him. He did not just think of how he had benefited. But let us notice what our Lord says at the end. “Your faith has saved you” (Luke 17:11-19). It was the person’s faith that led him to ask for the cure, and our Lord’s words suggest that his faith led him to be grateful and pleasing to God. It doubtlessly led him to a deeper relationship with God and a greater faith in him. Our faith should lead us to ask for what we need, especially for our spiritual needs. It should lead us to be aware of all that God has given us and is continually giving us. It should lead us always to be thankful, and humble.

Furthermore, — and this is important — our faith will lead us to be thankful to God also in bad times. That is a real and lively faith — to be able to thank and praise God in both the good times and the bad. That is the faith that distinguishes the profoundly religious and Christian person. It often happens that when bad times come — some serious mishap — we pray and pray, asking God to help us in the situation, or to rectify it. Then, much later, when we look back on that situation and on what followed it, we can see that the hand of God was upon us. Indeed, we may come to see that in allowing that very distressing situation to come upon us, God was in fact preparing the way for something better. His goodness was at work in allowing the apparent evil. Our faith helps us to be grateful, even in the bad times. This is the age of polls and surveys. At every state or federal election we hear what the polls are saying. I wonder what a poll would show of the principal virtues of our day. I suspect that the virtue of gratitude would not rank highly. We are continually being presented with advertisements inducing us to get more and more, leading us to forget the many blessings we continually have. Are we characteristically grateful? I tend to think that typically we are angry. God knows our needs far more than we do. Our Lord tells us elsewhere in the Gospel, “Do not worry, your heavenly Father knows your needs before you ask them. Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice and all these things will be given to you besides.” Our Lord is not promising that we will get all we want, but he is promising that he will look after us. And what is it that we truly need? In his Spiritual Exercises St Ignatius Loyola has us pray for one thing: God’s love and his grace. If we have an abundance of this, we have all we truly need. We can then leave most of the rest to God. So important is this element of thanksgiving that the Mass itself is called a prayer of thanks. It is the Eucharist, which is the Greek word for giving thanks. The Eucharistic Prayer, during which the bread and wine become the risen Jesus in his whole human and divine reality, is the prayer in which above all we give thanks to God for all he has done, especially in and through the sacrifice of his Son Jesus.

At Sunday Mass we ought, in union with our Lord, ask God for all that we need, praying for those in need whether alive or dead, and giving thanks and praise for what he has done for all of us. Especially in this greatest of prayers of thanks and praise, we ought ask for the grace to think much on all that God has done for us, asking him to help us to be deeply grateful.

(E.J.Tyler)

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