October 12, 2025

Dear Parishioners,

The return of the leper to give thanks to God is one of the first Gospel stories I can recall from my earliest days. That and Jesus walking on water. The return of the leper is such a great lesson in gratitude, and that’s probably why I remember it so vividly. All of the lepers were healed, but only the one who returned to say thank you was truly saved.

For some reason I also remember being told this story while in the church at Sts. Faith Hope and Charity where I went to grammar school. I must have been in first or second grade. I remember asking our teacher who was giving us a tour of the church–I don’t recall why this Gospel story came up–what was the difference between being healed and being saved. To me, healing was enough. That was all that mattered. They were no longer lepers–what more could there have been to receive? I didn’t yet understand salvation. All I remember was my teacher reiterating that saying ‘thank you’ was important and that salvation was greater than healing. The nine lepers received something, but not everything. The one leper got it all.

I’m still musing on that thirty years later. There is always something more at stake than the outcome we desire in the particular situation. We want a happier marriage. We want better health. We want a higher paying job. We want good grades. We want friends. We want our children and grandchildren to go to Church. We want a certain kind of leader. We want psychological and emotional healing. All good things. And if we get them, we’ll be happier and our life will be nicer. But we won’t necessarily be saved.

Salvation is something deeper. Salvation is falling in love with God and committing ourselves to him. If receiving one of those things I listed above makes us grateful and puts us in closer touch with God, then, yes, the gift facilitated our salvation, like the healing from leprosy facilitated the Samaritan leper’s salvation. God will then give us what we asked for because he sees, in his eternal wisdom, that the gift will ratify our love.

I think of the scene when a man proposes to his girlfriend. He puts the ring on her finger and she admires the ring for a few seconds before looking at him and kissing him. She forgets the ring as she is overjoyed by her soulmate. The ring (the gift) is secondary. Her love for the man is primary.

Notice the thankful leper. He is healed. Instead of taking the gift of his restored health and doing cartwheels or going to the market or seeing his family and friends whom he hadn’t seen in years, he goes to Jesus. He falls to the ground, dirtying himself once again. He has received the gift of healing for which he so longed, and he is utterly detached from it, like the woman forgetting about the ring and focusing on the man. This is why the leper is saved. He has fallen in love with Christ.

Often we don’t receive the gifts we ask for because God knows, in his eternal wisdom, that we won’t have detachment and genuine gratitude for that gift. He knows we won’t be able to forget about the ring and focus on the love. We will instead cling to our symbols and forget who the source of the gift was. Then the gift will become the cause of our damnation.

This means we should be just as grateful for prayers that go unanswered and for gifts we want but don’t receive. Think about that. How contrary to the wisdom of the world! To be grateful for what we don’t have?! That’s preposterous. But not for us who have faith. This is the way of the cross. We are blessed in our poverty. For God knows that holding back the gift will keep our soul in love with God.

Christmas is a couple of months away. There we will have all our gifts under the tree, all the things we asked for. Maybe in this mid-October we can celebrate a sort of “anti-Christmas,” where we rejoice at the emptiness under the trees. That is, where we consider all the things we wanted and didn’t receive–all the things we don’t have–and allow that to bring a smile to our face. You might even go for a walk outside and look for those pine trees with nothing but grass and pine cones underneath them. Let your yearning for something you don’t have draw you closer to God.

And if Christmas has come early for you, and you’ve received what you’ve wanted, then consider how you can make your way to church or to the nearest tabernacle and fall on your knees in gratitude. When you stand up, with your heart in love with God, you’ll realize you’ve been saved, and that was far greater than the actual gift.

+

This past Saturday, October 11th at 10am was the Rosary in the Park hosted by our Knights of Columbus. Thanks to the Knights, as well as to our Respect Life Committee for their prayers for victims of domestic abuse and fostering awareness (the purple ribbons around campus). In this Respect Life Month of October, may we pray for all victims of violence, especially the unborn.

Good news on the Park Ridge Farmer’s Market Relocation plan. The City Council at the meeting this past Monday voted to stay at the current location and not move to Summit Avenue. This “1st reading” still needs to be ratified at the regular City Council meeting, but we should be in the clear. Thank you to all who supported our efforts, and I particularly want to thank Dan Johnston and Lisa Muench for their help with this.

Yours in Christ,

Fr. James Wallace