17th Sunday after Pentecost 2025
October 5, 202519TH Sunday after Pentecost 2025
October 19, 2025Texts: Luke 17:11-19
Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Austrian Catholic monk Br. David Steindl-Rast, (who is currently 99 years old!), is known for his teachings on the spirituality of gratefulness and gratitude. He said the following about cultivating gratitude: “Gratefulness has three steps: not missing the opportunity, appreciating the opportunity, and using or enjoying the opportunity. By this method we come fully alive, full of joy, which is what we are all longing for.” Often, we are so caught up by the busyness in our lives, that we don’t stop to “smell the roses” as the saying goes. We can get so overwhelmed by our problems, that we imprison our own awareness, not noticing the “glory around us”: the birds, the trees, the soil, the sky and the clouds, the rain and the wind, our neighbors and our family. We can miss out on this larger existence in which we belong, and therefore we isolate ourselves and forget to appreciate all the little and big parts that make our own life possible. This causes unhappiness, because joy, as Br. David reminds us, is received and experienced through gratitude. To be grateful is to appreciate or pay attention, to revere the givenness of things. That in simply existing, by the fact we breathe, it is not something we achieve by ourselves, it is a gift we receive. Love, mercy, compassion, belonging are things that we are given by God.
Gratitude is also a practice. I remember when I was a kid, and maybe still to this day, my mother liked to remind me to give thanks for gifts received. If my grandmother gave me a gift, almost always wrapped in an envelope alongside a letter, my mother would say, sometimes for days on end: “Emmanuel, remember to call your grandmother and give thanks for the gift” Not that I felt ungrateful! But it is so true
how easy it can be to feel gratefulness, but not express it in the busyness of the days! It is the reason why I am thankful for my mother’s persistence in making me aware of expressing gratitude, because in a world of distraction and self-isolation, expressed gratitude can wither quickly. And how great it is to see the fruits of gratefulness! The embrace and the smile of giving thanks for gifts, of seeing the bonds that unite us all in love. But if we are not careful with this practice, human beings can divert into a pernicious kind of entitlement, by which we ignore our communion with the rest of the world and only think about me, myself and I. Instead of “not missing the opportunity, appreciating the opportunity, and using or enjoying the opportunity” to be grateful, we waste it by continuing to treat life in a business kind of way, as a competition of transactions with no sense of the joy of living in grateful communion with the world, of not realizing that my life is not simply my own, I belong to a greater glory alongside everything else.
I believe that in this way, our Gospel speaks to us this morning. Jesus was traveling through, and arriving at a village was met by 10 people afflicted with a skin disease. The disease is not actually specified, but the narrative wants to depicts that these were 10 people held by the power of death. And so they probably had heard of Jesus and the Kingdom of liberation he was bringing forth, and so they called to him: “have mercy on us!” Jesus heals them and commands them to show the priests their purification, their liberation from the affliction of death represented by this skin disease. However, of all the 10 that were made well, only one came back to Jesus, and thanked Him. And this one that came back and appreciated the gift of healing was a Samaritan, a foreigner. Jesus then asks, where are the other 9 that belong to the
people Israel? They all went away healed, but none came back. Yet this foreigner, by faith in Jesus’ word, even though he existed in the fringes of the society of Israel, he appreciated the gift and noticed the glory. There’s much we can unpack in this, Beloved.
First and foremost, how those that should know better and go away, those that have heard the promises for so many times, yet when glory meets them, they apparently do not see it. Yet, the faith of this Samaritan, this outsider, notices it and does not let the moment pass. Like Brother David’s method of gratitude: he did not miss the opportunity when Jesus came into town bringing good news to the poor, he appreciated it and gave thanks for the gift of liberation, and he enjoyed the fruits of this opportunity. Having gained a faith that saves from the power of death, this Samaritan probably went on ahead to preach the gospel. This man, even though he was an outsider, knew how to notice the glory of God’s grace breaking through his affliction, and did not miss a beat. Joy and life and recognition he received. And then there is God’s grace, that does not withhold Himself in giving to us what we need. Even if we are ungrateful, even if we receive His grace, and walk away, He gives it. It reminds us that even Jesus worked thanklessly, because the works of God’s love do not depend on our fickleness. Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker, in her work serving the poor of New York City said: “Do not give to the poor expecting to get their gratitude so that you can feel good about yourself. If you do, your giving will be thin and short-lived, and that is not what the poor need; it will only impoverish them further. Give only if you have something you must give; give only if you are someone for whom giving is its own reward.” And God is such a giver. God’s grace overabounds
upon all of life, it transcends borders and limits. In faith, how important it is that we should recognize the treasure of gratitude, that God extends His hand to us constantly. The fullness of life we yearn for, the depths of love and mercy we need, are found if we do like the Samaritan: if we return to the presence of the giver in a spirit of gratitude and notice the glory.
So beloved let us cultivate this practice of gratitude. Let us see ourselves as recipients of a great gift, that our lives are a constant series of gifts from all the different relationships we inhabit, from the smallest cell to the stars in the universe, we inhabit a world of giving oneself to each other, a world that is best appreciated by being grateful. I’d like to end by sharing the following teaching of Br. David:
You think this is just another day in your life. It’s not just another day.
It’s the one day that is given to you – today. It’s a gift.
It’s the only gift that you have right now and the only appropriate response is gratefulness.
If you learn to respond as if it was the first day in your life- and the very last day- then you will have spent this day very well.
Begin by opening your eyes and be surprised that you have eyes that you can open.
The incredible array of colors that is offered to us for pure enjoyment.
Look at the sky. We so rarely look at the sky.
We so rarely note how different it is from moment to moment with clouds coming and going.
Open your eyes, look at the faces of people you will meet. Each one has an incredible story behind their face – not only their own story, but the story of their ancestors, all that life from generations and from so many places all over the world flows together and meets you here, like a life-giving water if you only open your heart and drink.
Open your heart to the incredible gifts that civilization gives to us.
You flip a switch and there is electric light- turn a faucet and there is warm water and cold water, and drinkable water, a gift that millions and millions in the world will never experience.
And so I wish that you open your heart to all these blessings and let them flow through you, that everyone you meet on this day will be blessed by you just by your presence.
Let the gratefulness overflow into blessing all around you- then it will really be a good day.
Let us pray: