Homily for the twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time (C).
One of the lessons I remember being drilled into me as a child was the importance of saying “thank you.” As with so many of the lessons we learn in childhood, I may not have appreciated its importance at the time, but now I’m grateful for it. The next time I see my mom and dad, I’ll have to remember to thank them.
Today’s readings are all about remembering—and forgetting—to give thanks. The attention that Sacred Scripture dedicates to the theme suggests that we are dealing with something much deeper than polite social convention. Gratitude does make for more pleasant social interactions, but it is also necessary for us to see the world truthfully. And it is something we easily forget.
Today’s Gospel passage, in fact, hints that perhaps we are more inclined to forget to give thanks than to remember. Ten lepers were cleansed, Jesus points out, but only one returned to thank him. Busyness can distract us from gratitude—we need to move on to the next thing, we don’t have time. When we get what we want, often our tendency, instead of saying thank you, is to try to get more. This is part of what theologians call “concupiscence,” the habit of selfishness burned into human nature by original sin. Today we can add a sense of entitlement to concupiscence. We like to speak of our rights—and politicians like to promise more rights—but while the rights we claim for ourselves multiply exponentially, our sense of responsibility never quite seems to keep pace. We forget that we would have no rights whatsoever if these hadn’t been granted to us by our Creator. To this forgetfulness we can add advertising that pushes us to buy more, to watch more, to scroll more, to consume more, and not to waste time remembering where we came from. My parents did well to drill saying “thank you” into me because there are so many other voices saying, “Don’t worry—just give me your credit card.”
The loss of a sense of gratitude makes a truly Christian life impossible. It’s no accident that the word that describes the central action in the life of the Church—“Eucharist”—comes from the Greek word for thanksgiving. In some ways, this might seem surprising because in the celebration of the Eucharist, God’s action, and not ours, is central. It is Jesus who gives himself to us; it is his power that transforms bread and wine into his Body and Blood, his living presence among us. What we do in this sacrament we do only because he gave us the instructions. The initiative is always God’s. The same can be said of all of creation. Everything that is is an unmerited gift.
Continue reading “Remember to say “Thank you”: Homily for the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time”
Tony Lusvardi, S.J. 