Sunday October 12 2025
28rd Sunday During the Year – Year C
Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1st reading: 2 Kings 5,14-17
Psalm: 97 (98), 1, 2-3ab,3cd-4
2rd Reading: 2 Timothy 2:8-13
Gospel: Luke 17,11:19-XNUMX

Homily in PDF

When the prophet Elisha said to the Syrian general Naaman: “go bathe seven times in the Jordan”, that Naaman ends up doing what Elisha told him, that he dips himself seven times in the Jordan and that his flesh becomes clean again, we understand that there is a link between what Elisha said and Naaman's healing. And we understand that Naaman comes back to see Elisha to thank him. 

With the ten lepers in Luke's Gospel, things are less simple. They cry out to Jesus: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”And Jesus said to them: “Go show yourself to the priests.” as indicated in the law of Moses so that the priest can ascertain the condition and make a diagnosis. They go. They too do what Jesus says, as Naaman did what Elisha says. On the way, they are purified—by the way, we don't know what this way is. Where do they find a priest? Is it right next door, is it further away? We don't know. Is it within five minutes of Jesus' words, is it the next day? We don't know. And of the ten, one returns, apparently without having gone to the priest, even though that is what Jesus had asked; we are not told that after seeing the priest, one returns... no, it is on the way. He understands that what they experience in this healing has its source in Jesus. 

This is how Scripture teaches us to decipher the action of God and the action of Jesus. Scripture teaches us to make this connection, to say to ourselves: "You see, there, in what happened, it is indeed Jesus who is at the origin." And it is by frequenting Holy Scripture, and in particular by frequenting the Gospel, that we can learn, like Saint Therese, to identify the action of Jesus, the action of the "good God" as Therese calls him, in our lives. For the Lord acts, and the Lord acts much more than we pay attention to, than we pay attention to. And there is this astonishment of Jesus: "Was there only this foreigner among them who turned back and gave glory to God?" 

Saint Therese also sees that few people around her come to give thanks to the Lord. She writes, at the beginning of manuscript B:

Jesus […] has no need of our works, but only of our love. […] In saying [to the Samaritan woman]: “give me a drink,” it was the love of his poor creature that the Creator of the universe was demanding. He was thirsty for love… Ah! I feel it more than ever that Jesus is thirsty, he meets only ungrateful and indifferent people among the disciples of the world and among his own disciples, he finds, alas! few hearts that give themselves to him without reserve, that understand all the tenderness of his infinite Love. (Manuscript B 1v)

And Thérèse will write in a letter to Father Roulland:

Oh! how great is my gratitude when I consider the delicacies of Jesus!… (LT 201 of the 1er November 1896, to P. Roulland)

Yes, brothers and sisters, how do we decipher in our lives the gentleness of Jesus? How do we decipher in our lives all the goodness of the Lord and how do we give him thanks? How do we return to him to give him thanks? How, in prayer, do we begin by giving thanks for what the Lord does for us? And do we know how to name what the Lord has done for us concretely? How do we train ourselves in this? How do we—I don't know if we can do it in the family—in our parish groups, our Christian groups, how do we seek to tell each other, while remaining very modest, what the Lord has done for us? I remember in the parish, in the catechumenate meetings on Sunday morning, we began with a round table with the catechumens, the companions and myself, with this time of sharing: what has the Lord done for us since our last meeting?

And I clearly saw how we enriched each other. Many times I said to myself: Look, this person sees God's action in this event of their life. Would I have thought of seeing God's action in a similar event? We can "educate" each other to see God's action in our lives.

And how do we come to express this thanksgiving, this gratitude to the Lord in the celebration of the Eucharist which is the thanksgiving par excellence, the thanksgiving that Jesus pronounces to his Father, the thanksgiving into which we ourselves are given the grace to enter: we come as it were to insert our thanks into the immense thanks of Jesus. How do we come to Mass on Sunday, bearers of concrete thanksgivings of our lives, to insert them into the great thanksgiving of Christ? 

Yes, as Paul says, his Gospel, that is, his proclamation, is centered on Jesus. “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.”

Remember Jesus Christ who gave his life for you. 

Remember Jesus Christ who came to you, taking you into his own life through baptism.

Remember Jesus Christ who gave you the fullness of the Holy Spirit, especially through the sacrament of Confirmation.

Remember Jesus Christ who wants to come and make his home in you in the mystery of the Eucharist to make you live his life. 

Remember Jesus who promised to be with us every day until the end of time. 

Remember Jesus, who is faithful to you, even if you lack faith. This is what the apostle tells us. 

Of course, we can close ourselves to Jesus, but if, having closed ourselves to the Lord, we turn to him, however poor we may be, however far we have gone, as soon as we turn around and say to him, "Lord, have mercy on me," immediately his mercy envelops us, immediately our heart is changed, if we are willing... immediately we can enter into his grace and we will hear the Lord say to us then: Go and show yourself to the priest in the sacrament of penance and reconciliation so that he may complete this return, so that he may complete this entry of mercy into your life, so that he may restore you in this sacrament by my grace. 

But we cannot hear this Gospel without pausing for a moment on Jesus' question: "The other nine, where are they? Haven't all ten been purified?" The other nine, where are they?

The question of the mission, brothers and sisters, is posed to us by Jesus. 

The question of the announcement of the Good News of Salvation is posed to us by the Lord: The other nine, where are they?

We can let our imagination run wild and perhaps imagine that the Samaritan who came to prostrate himself at Jesus' feet, giving thanks, glorifying God with a loud voice, that this Samaritan went to find the other nine to say to them: "But, do you know what I discovered? It is that what happened to us, the source, is Jesus." And perhaps later, the other nine, in scattered order, came to find Jesus to give him thanks too...

Because someone will have shown them, will have allowed them to make the connection between what happened to them and Jesus. 

The mission of proclaiming the Gospel is the concern that the Lord places in our hearts to make known his goodness, to make known the power of his mercy, to make known his love which never ceases to pursue every man. And if we have understood this, we also understand that we are the servants of this love and that the Lord wants to reveal his love to our brothers, to reveal his mercy, not first by our words, but first by our way of loving. It is our concrete love for our neighbor that can truly touch hearts. It was only at the end of her life, in the last year, in 1897, that Thérèse would exclaim:

This year, my mother, the good Lord has given me the grace to understand what charity is. (Ms C 11v°)

And Thérèse continues, she continues by meditating on the fact that the two great commandments are truly similar: to love God and to love one's neighbor. And then she connects them with the new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you.

She stops and says: but how did he love? And she looks at Jesus, the Word of God who became man, and who finds himself with his apostles who do not understand much of what he is doing, she looks at Jesus loving his apostles and she says to herself: but I must do the same.

And it is this love that is evangelizing. It is this love that can touch the other nine. It is this love that the Lord asks us to spread. 

And for this love to grow in us, we must increase our gratitude to God. The more joyful our hearts are for what God does for us, the more our hearts will open to charity and the more we will be able to manifest God's merciful love to the world.

Amen.