In the Catholic Church, every day is Thanksgiving. What do I mean? I mean that as the Second Vatican Council said in the document Lumen Gentium, the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life.
And we have the opportunity, and I know many of you take advantage of it, we have the opportunity so that each day can be a great act of thanksgiving, not because of what we do, but because we place ourselves in the presence of what Jesus did. He died for our sins so that we could live forever.
And one of the benefits of recognizing that the Eucharist is the source and the summit of life, made most profound in the Eucharist, is that it changes the way we see the world. I'm sure each of these 10 lepers were good people, but only one saw the world in a pathway of thanksgiving. The way in which this leper who recognized he had been healed and went back to thank Jesus, the way in which he saw the world, enabled him to see more clearly the action of God.
And such is the task of the Christian life. If I were to say, what is it that we should do every day? We should search, seek, find, and discover the ways in which the Holy Spirit is active in our lives. Now, what is interesting in this story is that Jesus is walking through a territory that isn't simply just Jewish. There are all kinds of people in the parts where Jesus is going. In fact, the word Samaria gives rise to the Samaritan.
And it is often the case when Jesus tells a story, the hero is the one who's most unlikely to see the faith. Almost always, it's Samaria. It's a Samaritan. It's the one who seems least likely to be the one for whom Jesus came. And yet, it gets our attention. At least it would have to the people who heard Jesus in the Gospels. It gets our attention.
The one who is least likely is the one who sees clearly what God wants to do in our lives. And if the Eucharist becomes the source and summit of our own lives, then there are ways in which things change in terms of how we act in our lives.
The homeless become a scandal to us because Jesus tells us in the 25th chapter of Matthew that we have a profound responsibility to every other human being because they are the Christ in terms of how we serve them. We give them food to eat. We give them drink to have. We visit them in hospital, prisons, etc.
If we see the world through the thanksgiving, the great act of thanksgiving that is the Eucharist, then indeed every decision we make ultimately is one that says, does this bring me closer to God or farther away? Does this help me become more holy or does it lead me away from holiness?
If there's a challenge for our Western culture where everything is seen as something that we do or we initiate or we see as good for us, we did this, we did that, if there's a challenge, it's that that's not where it begins. It always and everywhere begins with the grace of God.
God inspires us to serve the poor and it is because we react to that gift of grace that we're able to serve the poor, that we're able to welcome the stranger, that we're able to have a deep prayer life, that we're able to come and to recognize in every sacrifice of the mass that Jesus is truly and really present in our lives. And so on this day when we make special effort to be thankful for everything we have, all of the blessings that God has bestowed upon us, let us ask the Lord to help us to see more clearly his presence in our lives.
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