Parish of St. Ignatius of Loyola; Chestnut Hill, MA
13 October 2013; 8:00 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. masses
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C
2 Kings 5:14-17; Psalm 98:1, 2-3, 3-4; 2 Timothy 2:8-13; Luke 17:11-19
Though it still shocks me when I calculate it,
not even five months have passed since I packed a mini-van and
headed south for Washington, D.C.,
the land of government shutdowns, debt ceilings,
and always-measured political rhetoric.
It was a long haul down I-95, but on the way, I played some golf,
spent some time with my family, and became a priest.
Not a bad road trip, all things considered.
And now I am back, at least for the weekend,
a weekend on which the gospel reading could not possibly be more appropriate,
at least as far as my heart tells me.
Luke’s message is simple enough:
tremendous things, life-changing things,
can happen on the way:
so don’t forget to keep walking it.
This, to be sure, is the lesson learned by the ten lepers, all of whom,
were not healed the moment they encountered Jesus.
Theirs was not the fate of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law (cf., Lk. 4:39),
or of the paralytic whose friends lowered him through the roof of a house (cf., Lk. 5:25),
or of the hemorrhaging woman who dared to touch
the tassel of Jesus’ cloak (cf., Lk. 8:44).
All of these people, Luke tells us, are healed immediately.
Of the lepers in today’s gospel, however, we just heard this:
“As they were going they were cleansed” (Lk. 17:14).
They were in league with the disciples on the road to Emmaus,
whose “hearts were burning within [them] while [Jesus] spoke to [them]
on the way” (Lk. 24:32).
Quite likely, they were in league with all of you,
who, I am guessing, most often discover Jesus on the way,
not in the flash of a single moment.
Surely, they were in league with me,
especially when I consider how my way
has passed through this wonderful parish.
Does anyone ever tell you the reason why the Society of Jesus sends people like me,
people like Quentin Dupont and Victor Cancino,
people like our newest deacon Mario Powell,
to train as ministers here?
It has nothing to do with the church’s proximity to our house.
It has everything to do with you.
It has everything to do with the Society’s determined belief that
if a Jesuit’s way passes through this parish,
something tremendous,
something life-changing is going to happen to him here.
It has everything to do with Bob VerEecke, who has spent a quarter of a century
helping us all dance before Christ, just like David did before the LORD (cf., 2 Sam. 6:14),
and with J.A. Loftus, whose ministerial effectiveness in this parish
can be measured, at least in part,
by the hundreds of notes he has received these last weeks
as he has been recuperating from being ill.
The Jesuits’ sending people here has everything to do with Michael Burgo,
whose talents one-up St. Augustine’s quip about how singing means you pray twice;
with Michael, with all of our cantors and choirs,
our God must be feeling at least thrice praised.
Young Jesuits’ being here has everything to do with Amy Chapman and Susan Stuart,
who head up faith formation in the parish;
with Steve Sheehan/Amy Doherty/Catherine Downing,
who coordinate(s) this liturgy;
with Kathy Maher and Martha Sullivan,
spiritual mothers of so many in this parish and beyond,
not to mention biological mothers of some very lucky children;
with the women and men who have made and directed the 19th annotation
of the Spiritual Exercises here;
with the young adults, the first people I came to know at this parish,
people who always manage to make our simple basement holy ground
by their presence, their laughter, and their hope.
I am starting to feel like I am giving an Oscars speech,
so I will stop…even though, really, it is an honor just to be nominated….
Standing before you today, seeing your faces, saying aloud some of your names,
thinking interiorly of so many others –
all of this gives me a small sip of what the grateful leper must have deeply
imbibed when he “fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him” (Lk. 17:16).
For him, forging ahead on the way that brought him cleansing meant returning to Jesus
to give thanks to him, and “glorifying God in a loud voice” (Lk. 17:15).
The key here, of course, is to recognize that going back to Jesus
did not amount to the grateful leper going backwards in his life.
For him, the way forward was the way of thanksgiving.
The same is true for us, especially when we come together to open the Scriptures,
to break the bread, to pour out the wine, and to become what we receive –
what our ears hear, what our mouths taste.
We are people who cannot think of thanksgiving without thinking of the Eucharist,
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especially if we speak some Greek!
The word “Eucharist,” as you know,
has its root in the Greek verb “to give thanks.”
When we gather around this table, which includes gathering around that book,
we are doing our best impressions of the grateful leper.
We keep coming back here, week after week after week,
sometimes during the week too,
to give thanks to God for what God is doing in our lives.
We keep coming back,
but we are never going backwards.
Brothers and sisters, our ways, each of them, individually,
have brought us together today,
and in just a short while, they will disperse us again.
When they do, let us go forth glorifying God in a loud voice
for the tremendous things, the life-changing things,
that have happened to us on the way.
And let us, as individuals and as a church, keep walking it.
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