I’m not ashamed to admit that I am a rule follower, but I would say that my motives in following rules is usually less than completely honorable. A significant chunk of why I try to follow practices and procedures is because I hope it will protect me in the long term if someone takes issue with what I did; it’s always helpful to be able to point at the rulebook and say that I did what I was supposed to do. So I wonder what the mental process was for the lepers who were cleansed in the Gospel today when they realized that they had been healed on their way to show the priests. On the one hand, how could they not go back and give thanks to Jesus for healing them miraculously? But then again, He was the one who told them to go and show themselves to the priests, so shouldn’t they follow His orders?
Perhaps part of the lesson that Our Lord is offering us in this account of one of His miracles is that gratitude covers a multitude of sins, and we should prioritize thanking God over many other things in our lives. I’m not suggesting that no other commands of the Lord should matter to us, but obviously Jesus commends the man for breaking away from the group in order to thank God, so we would benefit from bumping “Thank God for our blessings” up the ladder of priorities in our lives. I would also argue that the cleansed leper’s overwhelming desire to go back and thank Jesus is evidence of the man’s true understanding of Jesus’ power and ministry. Perhaps his confreres noticed that they had been healed, and they attributed it to a transactional reality. They asked Jesus for healing, he told them to fulfill certain conditions, and now they would do so fastidiously so as to get what they desired. But the one who returned in thanksgiving knew that what underpinned his healing was Jesus, and so nothing could be more important than his relationship with Him.
Much of the world views religion in general, and Christianity in particular, as an exchange of freedom and obedience for peace or structure in our lives. We are willing to trade away our free will, so the argument goes, in order to feel comforted about our eternal destiny. But if we perceive Jesus the way that the grateful leper did, we see how much deeper it is than that. It is not an exchange of following rules for getting what we want: it is an exchange of our complete and total selves for becoming who God made us to be in the first place. That is true freedom, and that is what Jesus desires for us. This week, as we go about our business and seek to integrate God into our daily lives, perhaps we could consider what role gratitude plays in our perception of Jesus and His impact in our lives. May we always move away from the transactional perception of prayer, and instead embrace one wherein we surrender ourselves entirely to the Lord, trusting that what He desires for us is greater than anything for which we would ever dare to ask. Prayers always, Fr. McC