Face First

A Reflection on the Gospel for Sunday, October 12th, 2025:
Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Luke
17.11-19

​On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee.

As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

When Jesus saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.

Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”

Then Jesus said to the Samaritan, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

​On the way. So much of life happens on the way to somewhere, rather than when I get there. So many of the tellings in the Gospel of what Jesus was about start with “On the way….” It’s like that story about the dash on a headstone; all of my life on Earth will be in the dash between those dates. Amazingly, what comes after that final date is now another story, because of what Jesus did during His dash from Bethlehem, 0 AD – Jerusalem, 33 AD.

This time, on His way during His own earthly dash, He changes the quality of the dashes in 10 lives. In one of those dashes, that person’s response to Jesus’ mercy changes the quality of life even after the final date. In trying to understand why it was different for the Samaritan leper, I’m drawn to play around in the three different words used by Saint Luke, MD, that all bounce around the idea of healing: they were made clean, he was healed, and has made you well.

There was an extent of faith in all 10 lepers. They cried out for Jesus’ mercy from a distance, and from a distance Jesus told them to go show themselves to priests to have them confirm that they were no longer lepers. In faith, still bearing their sores and turning away from Jesus, they started walking to where they’d be inspected. It was in the going that they were made clean. This word carries the concept of the removal of impurities that had been added. The sores that marked their skin were gone.

With an added awareness, one man was able to pause in the desire to get back to normal life. Seeing the change in his skin, he realized that this went deeper. He was healed. It wasn’t just the marks on him that had vanished; the disease that had caused them was gone and would never return.

Realizing this changed the direction of his life. He had to turn and run back to Jesus. The faith that all 10 had held, that they would be healed, had shifted in him. Beyond the healing, he now had faith in the Healer. He had moved from faith that he would receive what he wanted to faith in Someone he had never expected. This, Jesus explained, had made him well. This faith had made him whole, removed him from danger and delivered him to safety. What would come after his dash was done was now forever different; in the action of running to Jesus, he would now be with Jesus, always.

Help me, Jesus, to always desire Your face more than Your hand. Let me be thankful for Your action in my life, but never satisfied by anything less than Your presence in my life. In this dash You’ve given me, make me more and more like who I’ll be with You after the final date.




Noreen Smith

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