Your faith has saved you..

Today's gospel narrative has Jesus curing ten lepers thrown together by a common lot of disease and being outcasts. Only one, the foreigner Samaritan, is moved to gratitude and touched by God inside and out. He is perhaps overcome with the realization that Jesus wasn't just a man. He praises God loudly and throws himself at Jesus' feet. Our deacon made the point about this episode and the work of evangelization that we are called to, without exception (but with variety, I guess). But he also makes the point that we cannot evangelize unless we ourselves were touched with such overwhelming love and realization of having received God's grace. How often have I ever felt the cured man's elation and overpowering joy? It is not as if I hadn't received such mighty gifts -- my wife, who puts up with so much; my kids, when I know of many who have not been blessed with any. It is easy to take them for granted, these mighty gifts from God, especially my wife's daily gifts of love, day in and out. So that is why St. Paul exhorts several times to thanksgiving, which is to live in this truth: God loves me, God in whom I live and have my being. That I can own that truth, when for most of my life, I could not, means that I should be ready to evangelize, when it is now more than head-knowledge. It is now conviction. (Great, another would-be Evangelical Catholic online!)