28th Sunday-Year C
2 Kgs 5:14-17
Ps 98:1, 2-3, 3-4
2 Tm 2:8-13
Lk 17:11-19
Obedience to the Word
of God is the solution to our problems!
Beloved in Christ, there are two themes
in our scriptural readings today that I would like to bring up for our
reflection. The first one is thanksgiving,
the nature of true gratitude. The second is the power of obedience to God’s
Word even when, humanly speaking, it does not make sense to do so. I know we
have heard so many wonderful homilies about how to be truly grateful so today I
will just focus on obedience to God as the solution to our problems!
In our second reading, St Paul advises
us not to let anything in life make us put the Word of God in chains. He
encourages us to obey the Word of God even when we are in the worse situations
in our lives and even when listening to God, humanly speaking, might not make
sense to us. Our first reading and the
gospel present the truth in what St. Paul is telling us.
In our first reading, Naaman, who
was an army commander of the king of Syria, was healed
and restored to life because he decided to put his faith in the Word of God
spoken first through a little girl and then through the prophet Elisha. Naaman
obeyed the instruction to wash seven times in the Jordan even when he had
previously said that it did not make sense to him. His obedience to the Word of God brought him life.
This is the same lesson that we find
in our gospel today. The Story of the ten people cured from leprosy in the
gospel also shows what happens when we obey God’s Word even when it seems not
to make sense to our human minds. According to human logic, the cure must happen
first before Jesus would ask hem to go and show themselves to the priest for
the certificate of being cured. So if the cure had not taken place why did the
ten men begin to work to the priest for that certificate? Beloved, these men
teach us that we should not wait until our problems are solved before we obey
God. Rather, the solutions to our problems come from obeying God even in the
midst of the storms in life. Waking in faith as a response to the word of God
brings the solutions we are seeking in life.
Beloved, when you look at the
natural disasters, the wars in Syria and the many parts of the world, terrorist
attacks all over the world, the issues of hunger and poverty, all the corruption
and crimes that go on in our country and all over the world, as well as the
many struggles we have in our families and individual lives, you will see that
like Naaman and the ten men in our gospel, our world is sick and we are looking
for solutions. However, unlike Naaman and the ten men, many politicians, world
leaders and indeed all of us, at times, leave God out as we search for solutions.
We throw God’s word away; we put the Word of God in chains as we try to solve
our problems. But our readings today remind us that the first step towards true
solutions to the problems in our world is to obey God even when it seems not to
make sense to our human way of thinking. So let’s bring God back into our
politics, our schools, our communities, and our families, and all our
relationships. Obedience to the Word of God is the solution to our problems!
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