Photo was taken in Sao Paulo, Brazil (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

A young patient inside the Sabara Children’s Hospital reaches through a small opening of the window to greet a window cleaner wearing a Captain America costume, as another dressed as Superman looks on in Sao Paulo, Brazil

Thought on Sunday – October – 13/10/2013

‘Our reflection today is by Triona Doherty

Some of us will be familiar with the prayer to St Joseph of Cupertino for success in examinations. Many of us regularly turn to St Anthony for help in finding a lost item, while others enlist the help of St Jude for particularly ‘hopeless’ cases, or Padre Pio when a loved one is sick or in hospital. We are very good at prayer when we need something, and have no problem turning to God in times of strife. But what about after the storm has passed?

The leper in today’s Gospel offers us a lesson in gratitude and faith. It is easy to ask for help, to call out ‘Jesus! Master! Take pity on us!’ It is not so easy to appreciate the implications of what God is doing in our lives.

Of course we would all like to think that we would be the one leper who came back to give thanks to Jesus when he saw he was healed. But in reality, are we more like the nine who forgot to give thanks? What Jesus wants to know is, ‘The other nine, where are they?’ I’d imagine they were so overjoyed to be healed, they simply got on with their lives! Perhaps over time the memory of this great thing God had done for them simply faded.

Jesus told the leper who returned that his faith had saved him. All ten were healed, yet this man had a fuller experience of the healing hand of Jesus. And his life was surely changed because of it.