Today's Gospel

The Power of Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, and welcome back to Radical and Relevant. Growing up in Australia, of course, I didn't have this amazing holiday. And I remember my first Thanksgiving in America. I was in South Jersey with a family, big family. And it was a magical experience for me. What a marvelous celebration, national celebration we have today. So happy Thanksgiving. On behalf of everyone here at Dynamic Catholic, please know how very, very grateful and thankful we are for you today, but also every day of the year.

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke 17:11-19. On the way to Jerusalem, he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices and said, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." When he saw them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he had been healed, turned back, praising God in a loud voice, and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan, and Jesus said, "Were not 10 cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" And he said to him, "Rise and go your way. Your faith has made you well." What jumps out at you today? We had this reading just a couple of weeks ago, and it's a very familiar reading anyway. But what jumps out at you today? For me, it's this phrase, "fell on his face at Jesus' feet." So the leper, he gets healed, he comes back, he falls on his face at Jesus' feet and prayer. This is a prayer. We've talked about it before. Every time someone addresses Jesus, it's a prayer.

And as Catholics, we pray with our whole being. You think about you go to mass, we stand and we sit and we kneel, and we process up to receive the Eucharist. And we process back. We come into church. We go out of church. And so prayer is physical. It is bodily. And there can be pride in our posture, and there can be humility in our posture. And when we kneel before God, there's humility in that. And this leper taking it even further, not one step further, many steps further. He fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. And so today, let's find a way to humble ourselves before God. It could be in something simple. You see movies from the past. And very often, you would see people kneel down beside their bed to pray. Some people keep this tradition alive, but it isn't anywhere near as common as it was 20 years ago, 50 years ago. And so maybe tonight, just before you go to bed, just kneel down beside your bed. There's something powerful about kneeling down beside our bed at the end of the day and thanking God for the day that has been. Have an amazing day. Happy Thanksgiving. And remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.