In Sunday’s gospel reading, we see that only one of the ten who were cured of leprosy returned to thank Jesus. This is not to suggest that the other nine were without any gratitude—it is hard to imagine that anyone who knew the isolation and poverty of a life with leprosy in the first century could be lacking in gratitude for getting his life back. Who knows what their response was later on in their lives? But the one who did return to offer thanks clearly saw the Person behind his restoration, a Person to be thanked—namely, the Person of Jesus—and that awareness was the root of his return.
The very word religion (Latin: re-ligare) implies a return and reunion, but such a return will only happen with those who are able to discern the Person behind the good things that happen to us every day. I’m reminded of a Hasidic tale in which a group of Jewish scholars were very upset that the renowned Jewish philosopher Maimonides would dare suggest that Aristotle knew more about the spheres in the heavens than Ezekiel. The Rabbi of Rizhyn said to them:
“It is just as our master Maimonides says. Two people entered the palace of a king. One took a long time over each room, examined the gorgeous stuffs and treasures with the eyes of an expert and could not see enough. The other walked through the halls and knew nothing but this: ‘This is the king’s house, this is the king’s robe. A few steps more and I shall behold my Lord, the King.’”
(From Tales of the Hasidim, by Martin Buber, Book II, p. 58.)
Ezekiel saw the cosmos as a person’s house—the king—that is, the Lord God himself, which moved him to search further in order to find him. Indigenous peoples too have thoroughly “personalized” the natural world: trees, the sun, the moon, the eagle, a mountain, and so on are regarded as kin. We are part of a larger interconnected family, and so all things in the universe are at some level our relatives. This “personalized” way of looking at the world tends to foster a greater reverence for creation, as opposed to the depersonalized mode of thinking characteristic of the Western world, which has led to numerous man-made environmental disasters over the years.
One may dismiss this way of looking at the world as “pagan” until one realizes that St. Francis of Assisi saw things in much the same way. In The Canticle of the Sun, he refers to “Brother Sun, Brother Wind and Air, Brother Fire,” and “Sister Moon and Stars,” and “Sister Earth our Mother.” This is not a matter of projecting human qualities onto non-living things, but is rooted in the ability to discern a Person—the divine Person—behind the goodness and beauty of the cosmos, which continually announces that goodness and sings God’s praises (see Dan 3:24–90). This was the predominant intuition of the Samaritan leper whom Jesus healed, and it is this “sense of the divine” that is at the root of all genuine religion.
But this sense of the divine Person is also the source of our ability to see the personhood of every human being, whether that person is developmentally disabled, almost completely incapacitated by Alzheimer’s, battling the infirmities of old age, or suffering from a debilitating and terminal illness. We begin to realize that what is before our eyes is not simply a hunk of matter, a mere individual, but a human person—and this person was willed into existence by God for his or her own sake, not for my sake or even for the sake of society at large.
When we discern the divine Person behind the cosmos and behind the life that is ours, then we are moved to love him as well as the human persons he brought into existence for their sake, regardless of their condition, because we see them, as we see ourselves, as persons of intrinsic value and inviolable dignity, images of the divine Person. It is very possible to look at a human being and not see that “personhood”; at that point, we become capable of tremendous indifference, even violence. But when we become explicitly aware of that personhood in others, we can begin to love them with the heart of God, and as St. Augustine says in his Confessions, God loves each one of us as if there were only one of us to love.
If we don’t see the divine Person behind all that is, we may end up interpreting human existence much like some atheistic existentialists do: seeing human existence as absurd, as an arena of perpetual conflict and struggle for survival; thinking that love is reducible to the will to power; believing that the only kind of love we are capable of is the love of another primarily for the sake of what that person can do for me. As that attitude proliferates, life becomes increasingly empty and lonely, which spawns a variety of destructive behaviors such as substance abuse, mass shootings, suicide, and the request for euthanasia.
The Samaritan leper turns around and goes in search of Jesus to thank him for giving him his life back. And that’s what conversion is: a 180-degree turn. It begins with a recognition that we are known and loved by a Person much larger than ourselves and much larger than the world, and it is the awareness that we are loved which changes us and allows us to love in return, especially those who depend upon us because they simply cannot take care of themselves.
We in Canada begin to see that Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) is never an option. The only option is to love and care for the infirm to the very end, so that their death becomes a final prayer, a final offering to God in thanksgiving for all that He has given.
The Jerusalem Talmud teaches that to destroy one soul is to destroy an entire world. It also teaches the converse, that anyone who sustains one soul is credited with sustaining an entire world. It is quite something to behold a hospital parking lot and to consider the hundreds of vehicles parked there every day, belonging to nurses, doctors, surgeons, support staff, and others, all working toward a single end: the care of the sick and suffering.
It is holy work, and it has a value in the eyes of God that is beyond the grasp of a single person, because to sustain one soul is credited with sustaining an entire world. There is a kingdom that works against this in very subtle ways, a kingdom that Christ came to defeat. We choose which kingdom we wish to belong to: the one in which human life is disposable, or the one in which individual human life is regarded as sacred and of immeasurable value.
Image: PARMA, ITALY – APRIL 16, 2018: The fresco Jesus healing the ten lepers in byzantine iconic style in Baptistery probably by Grisopolo from 13. cent. Adobe Stock. By Renáta Sedmáková.
Douglas McManaman was born in Toronto and grew up in Montreal. He studied philosophy at the University of St. Jerome’s College (Waterloo) and theology at the University of Montreal. He is a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Toronto and ministers to those with mental illness. He taught Religion, Philosophy and the Theory of Knowledge for 32 years in Southern Ontario, and he is the current chaplain of the Toronto Chapter of the Catholic Teachers Guild. He is a Senior Lecturer at Niagara University and teach Marriage Prep for the Archdiocese of Toronto. His recent books include Why Be Afraid? (Justin Press, 2014) and The Logic of Anger (Justin Press, 2015), and Christ Lives! (Justin Press, 2017), as well as The Morally Beautiful (Amazon.ca), Introduction to Philosophy for Young People (Amazon.ca), Readings in the Theory of Knowledge, Basic Catholicism, and A Treatise on the Four Cardinal Virtues. He has two podcast channels: Podcasts for the Religious, and Podcasts for Young Philosophers. He currently lives with his wife and daughter in Ontario, Canada.
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