Where are the other nine? – Father Gavril Galev
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The God-Man Jesus Christ, the Word of God, was incarnate and became Man in order to save the world. And although He is God pre-eternal, by whom all things were made, He became as one of us in order to fulfil and to submit Himself to the law. After His ascension to heaven and sitting at the right hand of the Father, from whence He came, He sent the Holy Spirit into the world and founded the Church. The Church, as a place and a way of life and salvation, has Its own structure that must be respected. He established the Holy Mysteries and the priesthood as good ministers and administrators of those Holy Mysteries. God bestowed the priesthood within the Church, in order to heal the sick, to comfort the afflicted, to guide the lost, … etc.
At that time, leprosy was considered an incurable and contagious disease, and therefore these ten sick people were isolated and separated from inhabited areas. When the Lord Jesus Christ passed near them, they became aware of it and saw in Him the only hope for a way out of their situation and cried out strongly: “Jesus, Teacher, have mercy on us!” The lepers did not ask God for anything but forgiveness, and, God healed them, telling them to go and show themselves before the priests. He instructed them thus in order to preserve the order in the Church, and to leave us an example. However, while they were still on the way, going to the priests, they were healed.
Through the example of their obedience, the Lord Jesus Christ actually reveals to us how all things happen in the Church. He told them to go to the priests, they obeyed him and even before they reached them, God healed them. This means that it is not the priest who heals, who guides, who directs on the path of salvation, but God. That is why we need to have the right approach towards God, to open ourselves to Him and establish a personal relationship, a personal union (communion) with Him. May God be everything in our lives, may He become our father, and we His children. And the priest is the one who represents God on earth, that is, he is God’s icon, and we should have the necessary respect and obedience to him.
We should know that when we ask priests for help, to heal our infirmities, to help us and to guide us on the path of salvation, in fact, it is God who works through them. God is the One who heals the sick, God is the One who guides the lost, comforts the afflicted, and God is the One who guides and directs those who seek Him. That is why we should have complete obedience to them, and the priests should completely serve God and draw strength, wisdom and enlightenment from Him in order to fulfil His will.
When the priest preaches from his own mind, then God does not speak through him. The priest is the one who should draw the believers to God and not to himself. The one who speaks from his own mind draws the believers only to himself and not to God, and this is where the relationship becomes problematic. And therefore the priest should serve God first and foremost and he should be submissive to Christ.
Furthermore, from this Gospel reading we see that ten were healed, and only one of them returned to express gratitude to God. Only one of them recognised God, only one of them realised that Jesus was God – the One who healed them, and, that one person was a man from a different kinfolk and of a different faith. As it can be noticed, at first they call God a “Teacher”, and later the healed person came to express gratitude to Him, and confessed Him, glorified Him, and worshiped Him as God. And out of all ten, God told only to this person, that he received salvation.
This does not mean that we who were born as Orthodox Christians are automatically guaranteed the kingdom of heaven and salvation, if we do not live a true Christian life, that is, if we do not place God in the appropriate place in our lives. If we place someone else or something else, a goal, a passion, or a person, such as a philosopher, a leader or ourselves, then those things become our idols, we place ourselves in the place of God, we become idols for ourselves.
But in order to achieve that balance in life, we should start the day with prayer and end it with prayer. Prayer is that which unites us together with Christ, with God, and therefore, as the Holy Apostle Paul says, let us be grateful to God and pray unceasingly.
The plea of these lepers to Christ provides the basis of the so-called Jesus prayer, which the Holy Fathers recommend us to pray with, beginning in the morning, during the day, and at night as much as we can to say it. To join the name of Jesus with our breathing. Let us repeat the words of the prayer “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner” at any time and in any place, especially when we are in tribulations and temptations.
God praised the one who returned and express gratitude to God. Gratitude is an expression of the quality of our life. The state of the spirit is recognised through gratitude. Gratitude makes our relationship with Christ our God correct. Expressing gratitude is our true relationship with God.
Because of our erroneous relationship towards God, we ourselves often know to be proud because of our good deeds, successes or gains and to consider them as our merit. And yet, when we have difficulties and falls, then we blame everyone else, we even blaspheme and complain to God. Yes, we say that this one is to blame, or that situation is to blame, or the devil made us do it, but we never admit our mistakes as our own, and thus we become ungrateful sons, prodigal sons who have betrayed and abandoned God.
So we need to “straighten” our thoughts, words and actions and thus establish relationships in life with God, with man, with nature and with ourselves, in order to be correct. Gratitude is the best act, the most correct act, by which it is made manifest that those relationships are placed in the correct correlation and that is how we should try to live.
Let us thank God for everything.
Father Gavril Galev
Abbot of the Monastery “Saint Clement of Ohrid”,
Kinglake, Melbourne, Australia
17 / 12 / 2023
