Lk. 17:11-19: “Get up, go; your faith has saved you.”

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and on that journey, He meets ten lepers who from a distance beg him to heal them and He heals them. The surprising thing is that, of the ten, only one returns. Only one recognizes where grace comes from, one returns praising God and giving thanks to Jesus. And that man was not a Jew, but a Samaritan, a foreigner, despised. And Jesus says to him, “Get up and go; your faith has saved you.”  Are we one of the nine who receive and forget, or the only one who returns gratefully?

The lepers lived isolated, rejected, condemned to be far from everyone. However, Jesus does not avoid them, but listens to them and attends to them. Today, too, there are many “lepers”, those who are marginalized, despised, ignored by society. Jesus invites us to approach them with mercy and with deeds that bring them life.