We have already arrived to the month of December and closer on our journey to the glorious Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord. It is a time when already following Thanksgiving, our preparation for Christmas has begun. During this frenzied time we often neglect our obligation to take some time for our own personal preparation, spiritual preparation, to meet the new born Christ in the Manger.
The Gospel for this Sunday is an account of the Healing of the Ten Lepers. We have all heard this story for years about the ten lepers from the area between Samaria and Galilee. Jesus, after being entreated by the lepers, instructed them to go to the temple and show themselves to the priests, but on their way they were miraculously healed of their infirmity. As the story goes after their healing, one of the ten, turned back to give thanks to God, a Samaritan. Then Jesus said only one returned but were there not ten who were healed. You see the point is that though they were healed of their physical malady they also needed spiritual healing. It can be said that because of selfishness and moral insensitivity, they also were afflicted with leprosy of the soul, besides that of the skin.
Often we recognize physical infirmities first and neglect our spiritual maladies. An unexpected pain sends us to the doctor, the flu keeps us in bed, yet hate, anger, bitterness, greed, emptiness and other spiritual ailments, is business as usual, unwilling to care about the health of our souls. The spiritual harms we inflict upon one another torture us just as painfully as pneumonia, heart conditions, ulcers and other serious physical ailments.
We must persevere in our faith so that our physical and spiritual needs are healed by Our Lord, for as it says in Romans, 7:24, “What an unhappy man I am! Who will rescue me from this body (that is, the self), that is taking me to death? (that is, spiritual death)” “Ask, and you will receive, seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened unto you” (Matthew 7:7).
