Count your blessings, chiefly those we receive through Jesus the Christ

A reflection on the daily readings, for Thursday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time, Thanksgiving Day, by Father Perry.

By Father Perry D. Leiker, pastor

Bless you God, and thank you!

Maccabees, Paul, and the Corinthians all get it right.

Praise flows from their hearts, lips and in their writings as they acknowledge God’s greatness, goodness, blessings, and love.

They all sound like a “please” and “thank you” people who acknowledge — because they truly recognize — God’s presence and God’s blessings in their lives.

Their example is sterling, and that is why most parents have taught their children from an early age what we used to refer to as the “magic words” — please and thank you!

And if they are magic words — and they are — they are precisely because they take us to an inner place, an inner space where we experience blessing and gratitude.

And yet, as strange as it may seem, sometimes people receive enormous blessings; and for some strange reason do not seem to land on that space called gratitude.

Even Jesus seems perplexed that out of 10 lepers cleansed and healed, and able to return to their homes and their families and loved ones, only “one” showed gratitude.

It is inconceivable and even baffling that the other nine did not.

Did they not feel gratitude? Did they never learn those magic words?

Had they no manners? Were they so overjoyed at being healed that they ran off in that joy and just forgot to give thanks?

The fact in the story that even Jesus was surprised, perhaps, gives us a little hint of why this story really comes alive on the page.

For it notes that the only one who came back to give thanks was a leper in two ways — at least to the Jews.

He had leprosy, a dreadful disease that not only ate away the body in decay, leaving a leper alone or to live with other lepers so that their disease would not spread among the clean and healthy community members.

But he was a leper in the sense that he was a foreigner and considered unclean socially for the Jews, and someone with whom Jews would not associate with.

And typically, Jesus did just that; without a moment of hesitation, he sent the lepers, even before they were cleansed, to present themselves to the priests who would declare them clean, for that was one of the priest’s duties.

And it was on the way that they were healed.

On the way!

It is one of those few examples where the healing happens in process or while on the road.

It is almost like someone eating their breakfast while they are driving their car: eating along the way.

All the more reason why all should have come back to say thank you!

Perplexing, baffling, and yikes!

And yet, this lone Samaritan falls at the feet of Jesus to give thanks!

And so should we, as we count all of our blessings, and especially the blessings that have come to us through Jesus the Christ.

This was truly, for all those lepers, whether they realized it or not, their very own very special Thanksgiving Day. 

Let us all give thanks!

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Father Perry Dean Leiker is the 13th pastor of St. Bernard Catholic Church. Reach him at (323) 255-6142. Email Father Perry at pleiker@stbernard-church.com.