Living with a Grateful, Eucharistic Heart

By Bishop Paul S. Loverde
Special to the Herald
(From the issue of 10/14/04)

The following homily was given by Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde for the Blessing of the Respect Life Memorial at St. Leo the Great Parish, Fairfax, on Oct. 10.

Most of us have either heard or used the expression: "There is more here than meets the eye." This is true of our scripture readings today: there is more in them than meets the eye. Today’s gospel account from Saint Luke is very familiar. Certainly, a key theme is the gratitude of one leper and the ingratitude of the other nine. "Jesus said in reply, ‘Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?’" And in today’s first reading from the Second Book of Kings, Naaman the Syrian did return to Elisha the prophet to offer a gift in thanksgiving for being cured of leprosy.

So then, being grateful – gratitude – is the key lesson for us to learn today. Yes, it is, but there is more here than meets the eye. We are being instructed not only to be grateful at the human level, but also to be grateful in the biblical sense. What does being grateful or gratitude imply at the level of faith? In the scriptures, being grateful implies a confession of faith in the Lord and an acknowledgement of God’s love for His people. The leper in the gospel, by returning to Jesus, made a confession of faith in Jesus and acknowledged the Lord’s sovereignty in his life.

So, today, the Lord is calling us not only to be grateful and to express that gratitude at the human level – and we must show gratitude in that way, but also to be grateful by proclaiming in daily life that Jesus is the Lord of our lives. To be grateful as Christians means witnessing to the Lordship of Jesus in our lives. In other words, the disciples of the Lord live with grateful hearts.

What does it mean to live with a grateful heart? Well, for example, this means acknowledging and using the gift of faith, first given to us at Baptism. Are we grateful for the gift of our Catholic faith? To profess our faith means to accept all that God reveals in scripture and teaches through the Church and then to put into practice these teachings. To live the faith means to surrender totally to God Who does reveal Himself most clearly in Jesus, sent to be our Lord and Savior.

Yes, what does it mean to live with a grateful heart? This means living with a spirit of radical dependence on the Lord. Faith enables us to surrender to the Lord and that surrender is an act of radical dependence. We acknowledge that God is the Lord of life and that everything ultimately depends on Him. This is why all the issues of life are ultimately governed by Him. This is why we cannot take innocent defenseless human life either at its beginning or at its end. All life belongs to God and ours is the privilege and the responsibility to protect, to defend and to respect life from its first moment at conception all the way to its last moment at natural death. After Mass today, we shall proudly dedicate the Right to Life Memorial, which has been sponsored by the Father Francis J. Diamond Council of the Knights of Columbus, and which will stand in front of Saint Leo’s Church. This memorial, with its statue of Our Lady of Providence, will be an enduring silent witness and tangible reminder of the primacy of human life and of the need to restore and to deepen the culture of life in our country and society.

What does it mean to live with a grateful heart? This means living in close union with Our Lord in the Eucharist. As we know, the word "eucharist" in Greek means "to give thanks"! In each celebration of the Eucharist, we proclaim our faith that Jesus is Lord; we express our radical dependence on Him, because He alone can change us and transform us even as He absolutely changes bread and wine into His very Body and Blood; we become what we celebrate: His Body, the Living Presence of Christ in the world. To live with a grateful heart is to live with a Eucharistic heart!

Our Holy Father announced last June that we Catholics would observe a Year of the Eucharist from this October to next October. An International Eucharistic Congress is beginning this week in Guadalajara, Mexico. Next Sunday, our Holy Father will officially open the Year of the Eucharist by celebrating the Mass at the Vatican. This Year of the Eucharist will close on October 29, 2005, at the end of the month-long Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist. I pray that we will become more closely united to Jesus in the Eucharist so that we can live authentically as His Eucharistic disciples in the world.

Yes, there is more here than meets the eye as we ponder today’s scriptures. We are to live as grateful, dependent and Eucharistic disciples of Jesus every day. That means not only saying "thank you" in words but also living "thank you" in all we are and do. This means, above all, proclaiming Jesus as Lord in daily life every day until, like the leper in today’s gospel, we return to Jesus and forever live our "thank you" in His presence.

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