COLLECT SERIES
The Collect for the 28th
Sunday of the Year C is as follows:
May your grace, O Lord, we pray, at all times
go before us and follow after
and make us always determined to carry out good
works.
Through our lord Jesus
Christ, Your Son,
who lives and reigns
with You
in the unity of the
Holy Spirit,
one God for ever and
ever.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
In making this prayer tangible for during the week, the following reflections questions emerged:
- What are the graces I desire from God in your life this coming week?
- . What are the graces I pray for?
- What are the good works that need to be carried out this coming week?
- What are the good works that I have previously failed to do and could do this coming week?
- What does it mean to me to be determined to carry out good works? What does being determined mean to me in this context.
GOSPEL REFLECTION.
The Gospel is from St. Luke 17:11-19. The
incident of the ten lepers happened as our Lord was on His way to Jerusalem,
where He was to die on the cross so that we could live eternally. The Church
brings it before our minds today, to
remind us of remind us of the mercy and
kindness of Jesus to all classes, even the outcasts, as lepers were, and to remind us and be amazed at the depths
of ingratitude to which humanity can sink.
Jesus cured
many people in His public ministry. Some would have been grateful for sure but
also many of them who were miraculously cured forget to thank Him.
Lepers in the time of Jesus were outcasts. Today’s Gospel
highlights that there was one, and he was the one least expected to do so, who
had the decency to return and thank his benefactor. This pleased our Lord and
led Him to remark on the ingratitude of the others. "Were not all ten made
whole, where are the other nine?"
Jesus was not
disappointed that He was not thanked for His own sake but for theirs as in
failing to show gratitude, they missed greater graces through this lack of
appreciation and gratitude.
It should be
noted clearly that all ten lepers showed great faith and confidence in Jesus'
power to heal. They had not heard Him preach nor had they seen any of His
miracles. They lived in isolation camps, yet they believed the reports they had
heard. They all were very obedient too. They set off for Jerusalem to carry out
the command of Jesus, even though their leprosy had not yet left them.
In all of
this it was their own self-interest which came first in the minds of the nine
Jews. Once they found their leprosy gone all they thought of was their own good
fortune. Their Benefactor was quickly forgotten. The Samaritan's first thought,
on the other hand, was of the one who had healed him. He was as delighted as
the others with his cure but being generous and thoughtful for others, he felt
it his bounden duty to return and thank the man who had done him this
miraculous good turn.
How do we
feel when we hear this Gospel? Does it
speak to us about our own level of gratitude to God and to others who help
us? We may feel ashamed of our fellowmen
who were so ungrateful, and who treated the loving Jesus so shamefully, but are we any different from them towards
showing gratitude to Jesus.
It should be noted that those Jewish lepers were unaware that He was the Son of God who
assumed human nature, became man, in order to raise us up to a new supernatural
status. He gave them the gift of physical health for thirty, forty, or maybe
sixty years more. We know that He has come to give us an eternal life — a life
that will last forever, a life free from all troubles and worries "where
all tears will be wiped away and death shall be no more."
With this
knowledge then of what Christ means to us, of what His Incarnation has won for
us, of the eternal freedom from all sickness and death which His human life,
death and resurrection have put at our disposal, how can any real Christian
ever cease thanking Him, could there be such a being as an ungrateful Christian
ever on earth?
Unfortunately,
there is not only one such ungrateful being, but there are millions of them.
How many of us here present are numbered amongst these ungrateful ones? There
are those of us who think of God only when we are in difficulties. While things
are going well, when there is no sickness in the home, when our business is
prospering, when there is peace all around us, how many times in the week do we
say, "thank you, God, you are very good to me." When trouble strikes
it is a different matter. We rush to church, we implore God to have pity on us,
we make novenas to our special saints. This is not wrong. What is wrong, however,
is that we forgot to thank God all the time that He was giving us spiritual and
temporal favors.
Think for a
moment. If those nine ungrateful lepers were struck again with disease some
months later and returned to implore Christ for a cure, would you blame Him if
He refused? Most of us would refuse. Yet we expect Him to listen to our urgent
pleas the minute we make them, while we have not given Him a thought and never
said one "thank you, Lord; while things were going well with us.
We all need
to be more grateful to God every day of our lives—more grateful than we have
been. He has not only given us life on this earth with its joys and its
sorrows, but He has prepared for us a future life where there will be no
admixture of sorrows. It is for that life that we are working. It is because
there is a heaven after death that we are Christians. God has already done His
part in preparing this heaven for us. He is assisting us daily to get there. We
need a lot of that assistance and one of the surest ways of getting further benefits
from God (as well as from men) is to show true gratitude for the benefits
already received.
HOW TO
DEVELOP GRATITUDE
Psychologically
and physically the best way to develop gratitude is this:
Just
before you fall asleep, walk through in your mind your day. Name 1 or 2 things you were grateful for that
day.
They
do not have to be big events- eg it might be that you thank God for the water
so you can do the dishes or the dishwasher can do the dishes for you. It is something we do every day- dishes…always
dishes. Yet do we stop and think of the
people who made the dishwasher who were given the skill and expertise by God to
be able to do it? Do we thank God that
we have water? Many drought stricken
parts of Australia suffer because of lack of water. Many of us waste so much
water that could be used by these people in these areas.
It is
vital that it is done just before you fall asleep as the mind processes and
provides healing as we sleep. By doing this at this time, we are, over time
bathing our spirit in gratitude and we will awake feeling more appreciative of
life.
Sometimes
when life is really difficult, it is hard to think of something to be grateful
for. However, we all wake up because God
allows it for us each morning. We all get out of bed- when life is difficult,
getting out of bed can be a real achievement. Be grateful for that step.
There
is another part to the exercise but I know from experience that doing this for
a week/month every night at first really helped me to focus on what I had to be
grateful for and to appreciate the many gifts God gives me every day. There is seldom a night I miss this now
because I know that the more I do it, the more grateful I feel about life- my
spirit is bathed in gratitude and should Jesus choose to provide more graces
for me, I am ready and open to receive them.
I
highly recommend this to you all. Try it for a week to start and see how
different you feel- better still do it for a month and you will be surprised at
the difference. Remember even getting
out of bed on difficult days is a grace and something to be grateful for.
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