Twenty-Eigthth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Not quite two weeks ago, one of our younger parishioners (I
believe she’s four years old) left a very unique gift for me in my office: a
beet from her garden. I guess it
was awhile before when she’d said, “That one’s for Fr. Joe,” and so, when the
harvest was gathered in, it made it’s way to me. Now you need to understand that this was no ordinary beet:
it was the biggest beet I’ve ever seen.
(It was so big, in fact, I thought it might be a turnip!) Think of a really large grapefruit…and
it was even bigger than that.
I knew that such a kind and generous gift needed to be
properly acknowledged, and so I sent her a small thank you note a couple of
days later. A couple of days after
that, her proud father showed me a photo he’d taken on his phone: it was his
daughter asleep, her head on her pillow, curled up with my thank you card. He said that she’d insisted on going to
bed with it for a few days.
Now, I know that this young lady was clinging to more than a
small piece of heavy paper. It was
a stand-in for something more precious—a sort of sacrament, if you will, of my
appreciation. Likewise, the beet
she gave me was more than an impressive piece of produce (and a very tasty one,
at that). In the process of
giving, receiving, and responding with thanks, we had exchanged more than
presents and pleasantries; we’d exchanged a small part of ourselves. And what do we call it when you give of
yourself to another person, or give of yourself for another person? Of course, we call that love. She’d done much more than bring me a
gift; we’d been brought a bit closer together.
It would be easy enough to hear the readings from Sacred
Scripture this Sunday and imagine them simply to be a divine reminder of the good
manners which we ought to have learned as children: “Always say ‘please’ and
‘thank you’!” But it runs so much
deeper than that. We’re always
missing out when, in receiving a gift, we focus our attention on the thing we
have received, rather than on the one who has given it. And how that is especially the case
with God! God’s great delight in
bestowing his blessings upon us isn’t in the good things he can provide; it’s
in the chance to draw us closer to himself. Likewise, our delight in responding mustn’t be so much in
the gift as it is in the Giver.
Clearly, the Samaritan leper understood this, and that’s what led him right
back to thank Jesus.
We have come together before the altar, as we do Sunday after Sunday, to
celebrate the most blessed of the Sacraments: the one we call the Eucharist,
which comes from the Greek word for “thanksgiving.” It truly is right and just, our duty and, yes, even our very
salvation, to give God thanks—most especially to do so here, where the Gift and the Giver are perfectly one.
May our gratitude be more than a matter of proper etiquette. May it draw us ever closer to the Lord.
May our gratitude be more than a matter of proper etiquette. May it draw us ever closer to the Lord.
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