In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory forever.

What does it really mean to give thanks? This is really what lies at the heart of the Gospel reading that we hear today.

What does it mean to give thanks? You see, these ten lepers were all eager to cry out to the Lord. They heard that everyone who came to him was healed of their diseases. Why not them? They've suffered all their lives from this terrible affliction that not only is a misery to them, but makes them into social outcasts. They can't come near to anyone; they stand afar off. That's why they don't approach—because that is not permitted for those suffering from leprosy. And they cry out, "Have mercy on us."

But then only one returns to give thanks. What happens to the rest? What of the nine, as Jesus asks? They go off on their own direction, following their own priorities afterwards. They're glad I'm sure, in some sense. They certainly recognized they're free from their constraints. Now they can go do all those things that they've wanted to do. They can go be with people that they want to be with. They're free. So they're busy chasing after their dreams, whatever was important to them. But they don't stop to actually give thanks to the one who healed them. As Jesus says, "Did none of them give glory to God except this foreigner, this Samaritan, this one who's not even of the people of God?"

So what does it mean to give thanks? What we find is that this Samaritan, this one who by all proper thinking in Judea doesn't know any better, doesn't know what to do, doesn't know the law—he goes out of his way coming back to Jesus. And as we hear, when he saw that he was healed, he returned giving glory to God in a loud voice, and fell down on his face at Jesus' feet giving him thanks.

Brothers and sisters, this is important to us. This is in fact why we are gathered here today. This is the very purpose of this Liturgy which we are celebrating right now: to give God thanks. We make a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving—the Eucharist—so that in this what we offer up to God is blessed and made something utterly new, so that we may be fed with the body and blood of Jesus Christ and make him our very life. That's what lies at the heart of this offering of thanksgiving.

And each one of us and all of us together have been so blessed. We've received so many good things from God. We have been restored and healed and given new life. We were estranged, all of us, from the God of life. And now, as we learn all the time, we may be called children of God.

And so we too are called upon to stop and return, giving glory to God and giving thanks to him who has given us all things.

So how do we do this? What are we about when we give thanks? What we learn from this one leper who knows what he's doing, knows how to give thanks, is that to give thanks means going out of our own way, to turn aside from our own schedule, our own priorities. When we realize that we have been blessed, we have been healed, we must come into the presence of the One who has blessed us and come with our complete attention to the Lord.

Giving thanks also means speaking out to give glory to God. Make a confession of faith, to speak up, to be open to the opportunity that God has granted us. So often we use our voices to complain, to point out the failures in other people, to express our disappointment with our lot in life. And in all this, we are missing out on the whole calling of the human race, because we were placed on this earth in the very beginning in order to embrace everything that God has made and called good, and ourselves recognize that goodness, take it into our own hands, our own lives, our own hearts, and then lift it up to God in a confession of praise and thanksgiving. That's what it means really to be human. This is our vocation.

And you see how far astray we go when we use our hearts and our voices not to give glory to God but to express a spirit of enmity, division, envy, resentment, avarice, and the rest.

Lastly, giving thanks means falling down at Jesus' feet, putting our whole life into his hands, commending it all over to him in faith and in thanksgiving. Without the gift of God in our lives, everything is a mess. Everything is full of sin and confusion and division and darkness. But when we put our life at Jesus' feet, everything is touched by him. Everything is embraced by him, is cleansed and purified and renewed and made right, made what it's meant to be, because we're putting our life into the hands of the one who gives us life.

Sometimes we recognize this miracle of transformation in our lives in a moment when it's all clear. We see how radically our life has been transformed and been renewed. Sometimes, for many of us, we need to look out over the whole course of our past and see the pattern of God, see his hand touching all the different parts of our life, knitting it together into something that we did not recognize at the time. But now we see it all together—something wonderful that makes us into children of God.

Regardless of our circumstance, regardless of how it is that our heart comes to this point of recognition of the goodness of God, of his love for mankind, of his love for you—today is the day to return, to come back to the Lord now and give God glory, falling down at the feet of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ who gives us mercy. And we in turn are meant to give him thanks.

And when we do this in this day, in this moment, our faith has made us well, because we are reunited with him who shows us all mercy and grants us life and joy more abundantly than we can possibly know or imagine.

Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory forever.