(Homily on Luke 17:11–19)
Our Lord passes “through the midst of Samaria and Galilee” on His way to Jerusalem, and ten lepers stand afar off, crying with one voice, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” Their distance is not only geographical; it manifests the separation imposed by uncleanness, the image of sin which exiles the human person from communion. The Gospel shows us the human heart in its truest need—a cry for mercy offered to the One whose mercy is without measure. In this scene we recognise our own condition—created for nearness, yet held at bay by the disease of passions that distort our vision and weaken our will. The first movement of salvation is thus a movement of the voice—humble, earnest, unadorned—acknowledging need and appealing to the Lord who alone can bridge the distance.
Jesus Christ does not heal them by spectacle; instead, He sends them to the priests, the appointed witnesses under the Law, and “as they went, they were made clean.” In this, our Lord teaches the discipline of obedience. Grace often arrives under the veil of ordinary fidelity—steps taken in trust before results are seen. The Orthodox life receives this as a pattern. For example, we keep the commandments, enter the holy services, confess our sins, forgive our enemies, and, along the path of obedience, the Physician acts. The sign should be obvious—we are cleansed not by our own contrivance but by walking the way He appoints; the journey itself, undertaken in faith, becomes the place where healing quietly unfolds.
Only one returns. He falls on his face at Jesus’ feet, glorifying God with a loud voice, and he is a Samaritan, a stranger. The Lord asks, “Were not ten made clean? But where are the nine?” Ingratitude is a quiet poverty of the soul; it forgets the Giver while grasping the gift. Thanksgiving, by contrast, restores the right order of our being. 1) God first, 2) the heart bowed down, and 3) the lips confessing His mercy. To return and give thanks is to step into truth, for gratitude confesses reality as it is—all is from God, through God, and unto God. Without thanksgiving, blessings harden into idols; with thanksgiving, they become ladders to communion.
The Fathers call the Church a Eucharistic people—people of thanksgiving. The Divine Liturgy is not a detail on the margin of life but the axis around which it turns but its centre. There we learn the Samaritan’s posture—to return, to fall before Christ, to glorify God. At the Anaphora we bring “Thine own of Thine own,” acknowledging that every breath, every healing, every deliverance, is from above. In the oblation of praise and of ourselves, we are taught to handle gifts rightly, not to hoard them, nor to boast in them, but to return them transfigured with thanksgiving. Thus the Liturgy re-orders desire and trains the heart to recognise grace in both abundance and want.
Leprosy rends the flesh; sin rends communion. The nine received bodily cleansing, but the one who returned received more. To him Christ says, “Arise, go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole.” There is a healing that touches the skin and a healing that reaches the depths. The wholeness bestowed here is salvation—reconciliation of the person with God, a beginning of that inner integrity which grace alone can grant. It is possible to be improved and yet not saved; the Gospel urges us to seek not an alteration of circumstances alone, but the restoration of the heart, that the image may be renewed after the likeness of Christ.
The identity of the grateful one matters. He is a Samaritan—an outsider to Israel. The Gospel thus proclaims what the Church lives—the mercy of Christ is not bounded by tribe, rank, or past. In Christ “the middle wall of partition” is broken (Ephesians 2:14), and the far-off are brought near by His Blood. The stranger finds a home; the distant draw near. The Church’s task is to live this hospitality of God, receiving the wounded without compromise of truth and without limits to love, so that those who stood afar off may learn to dwell in the household of faith and to glorify God with full voice and prostrate heart.
Obedience, gratitude, and worship belong together. The ten obeyed, and they were cleansed; only one obeyed, returned, and adored. Thanksgiving brings obedience to its fulfilment. If we obey without thanksgiving, our religion hardens; if we give thanks without obedience, our piety becomes sentiment. The wholeness Christ grants is given where obedience returns to the feet of the Giver and adores. Thus the Christian life is neither bare duty nor unanchored emotion, but the ordered harmony of hearing, doing, returning, and worshipping.
This passage also teaches us how to meet delay. The lepers were cleansed “as they went.” Many prayers are answered along the road rather than at the roadside. We never bargain with God; our way is to abide in faith. We continue the prayers, keep the fasts, honour the feasts, read the Psalms, and seek confession. In that quiet perseverance the Lord visits the soul and does what is needful, sometimes seen, often hidden. What looks like postponement to the flesh is enlargement to the spirit. By waiting in trust, the heart grows capacious enough to receive the gift without being consumed by it.
The grateful Samaritan shows us the right use of voice and body in worship. He glorifies God aloud and he lies prostrate before Christ. The body participates in thanksgiving—we sign ourselves with the Cross, bow, make prostrations, and receive the Holy Mysteries with fear and love. In a culture trained to receive without gratitude, bodily thanksgiving re-educates the heart, teaching reverence by humble gestures. The whole person—mind, heart, breath, and limb—must be engaged, for God seeks not a portion but the entirety of the human offering.
There is also a pastoral word here for those who feel distant. The ten stood “afar off,” yet Christ drew near by His word. No distance prevents the cry, “Have mercy.” No wound is disqualifying for the Physician. The Church, as the field hospital of the soul, invites the afflicted to the font, the confessional, the chalice. What we cannot repair, God can heal; what we cannot carry, God can lift. Therefore let none delay on account of shame or weariness; the Bridegroom welcomes the poor in spirit and crowns the penitent with joy.
I would like to add that the Lord’s question remains over every generation. “Where are the nine?” It is not a statistic but a summons. Let us be found with the one who returned—at the feet of Jesus, glorifying God. Let us cultivate the daily habit of thanksgiving, upon waking, before and after meals, at eventide, and in the Liturgy which crowns the week. Gratitude is not an afterthought; it is the atmosphere in which faith breathes and grows. To give thanks in all things is to confess that Christ is Lord in all things, and that His mercy is better than life.
We should be asking not only for cleansing but for wholeness. We must return, and keep returning, to give glory to God. In thanksgiving the heart is healed of forgetfulness, the mind is steadied, and the will is strengthened for obedience. May the Lord, who showed mercy to the ten and bestowed salvation upon the one who returned, grant us the grace to live eucharistically—so that in body and soul we may be made whole. And having been made whole, may we become witnesses of mercy to those still standing afar off, guiding them by word and by example to the feet of Christ, where all true healing begins.
May God bless you +
Fr. Charles
12 October 2025
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