A radical and disturbing diversity meets not only the welcome, but once again indirectly, the admiration on the part of the Lord: “And where are the other nine?”. This question of Jesus, which finds his response in the Eucharistic return of this leper who is also Samaritan, it requires our life to become an existential response full of gratitude. The fact of being lepers excluded from social and religious life; the fact of being Samaritans placed one in the condition of an anchor bigger because of the diatribes of orthodoxy, all this diversity and potential strangeness does not prevent its own and only one in ten of experience that along with purification and healing as well salvation that comes from the personal and conscious experience that is the “wedding ring”. We are all like Naaman the Syrian called to heal from leprosy of our arrogance which easily becomes suspicious even on God. We all have to learn as Timothy that if “the word of God it is not chained” then it can only make us freer, healthier, more humans, more holy. Naaman’s expectations of Elisha and those of the lepers who “said aloud:” Jesus, teacher, have mercy on us! ” (Lk 17, 13), they must be radically purified in order to open the way to a healing that is capable of touching and transforming the whole person. The first step of this purification is not to give in to haste and not to letting oneself be taken by excessive urgency: each therapy does not have alone need of medicines, but also of the time necessary for them to be able
take effect.

Commentary by b. Michael David, osb Novalesa Abbey

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves, Prinknash Abbey