Please and Thankyou but don’t forget the praise:

Today’s gospel story follows the reading from last Sunday about having faith in God the size of a tiny mustard seed. Jesus is still journeying to Jerusalem and meets ten lepers, who would in those days be seen as unclean and were cast out by the rest of the community. When they see Jesus they call out asking for his mercy and to be healed, Jesus sees them and tells them to go and visit the priest. In a way, he is asking them to have faith in his words. Although they all believed Jesus would heal them, only one of them, the Samaritan comes back to say thank you and to praise God for healing him.

As I read this story I was reminded of my parents telling me to say please and thank you, and to be grateful for what we have been given. Like the lepers in the story, our prayers can often be prayers asking God to help us in so many different ways … we say please. When we recognise that help we say thank you. There are however lots of gifts from God which we don’t specifically ask for and we also need to remember to say thank you for those things. Our Gospel story reminds us that as well as saying please and thanks you, we need to praise God like the Samaritan leper.

We need to remember God loves us and wants us to love one another including our neighbour just as that other Samaritan did in the parable of the Good Samaritan.