How Can We Heal the Lepers today? by Bridget Mary Meehan

Luke 17:11-19- The Ten Lepers

Today’s gospel story of the healing of ten lepers is not only demonstrates the compassion of Jesus, and the one’s leper’s gratitude but also challenges us to follow his example in our attitudes and actions towards all who are marginalized in our society today.

As Jesus traveled along the border between Galilee and Samaria, he encountered ten people with leprosy—ten outcasts standing at a distance, crying out for mercy. 

In Jesus’s time, lepers lived outside the walls of the city—unseen, untouchable, unnamed. To be a leper was not only to suffer illness but to be cut off from community, family, and worship. They were the walking symbols of exclusion. Yet when one of them came near, Jesus did the unthinkable: he reached across the barrier and touched him. Before the man was healed, he was already embraced. That compassionate touch restored not only his skin but his dignity.

In today’s Gospel, only one leper returns to give thanks—and he is a Samaritan, a foreigner, the least likely of all to be recognized as faithful. Jesus marvels: “Were not ten made clean? Where are the other nine?” 

Perhaps this story is not only about gratitude but also about awareness—about seeing the miracle of inclusion, about recognizing God’s presence where the world least expects.

Our society still creates boundaries that isolate and divide. We have new forms of leprosy—new ways we exile people from full belonging.

The “lepers” of our time are those whom fear or prejudice have placed outside the circle: the refugee  the trans youth, the divorced Catholic, the undocumented migrant, the unhoused, the woman priest in the RC Church.

Each of these bears the scars of exclusion. Each is crying out, “Jesus, have mercy on us. Like Jesus, we are called to see, touch, and restore. Healing today means more than curing illness; it means building communion—restoring dignity, equality, and hope.

Healing means standing with those who are left outside, challenging systems and theologies that wound, and proclaiming the sacred worth of every person and all creation.

When we choose compassion over comfort, we become healers.

When we build open tables and communities of belonging, we proclaim that the Body of Christ is all of us—no exceptions.

And like the one leper who turned back in gratitude, we, too, are invited to live in thanksgiving—to see grace at work in unexpected places and to recognize the Divine in the margins.

Jesus’s words to the grateful leper are meant for us, too:

“Stand up and go; your faith has made you whole.”

May our faith make us whole, and may our wholeness make others free.