Some of you may remember, or at least know of, Princess Diana. She was a rather confused character. But one incident in her troubled life caught the attention of the world. She visited an AIDS hospice and leaned over and kissed one of those suffering the disease. She reached out to one of those branded ‘untouchable’, truly on the margin of society. With one compassionate gesture she overcame a terrible taboo and restored the man to a dignified status as a fellow human being.
Which is what Jesus does in the incident recounted in the gospel. Lepers were untouchable, outcast, forced to live on the margins of a city or village, and certainly not allowed to participate in communal activity, especially worship. It was taboo to touch them, and so they lived lives of lonely squalor. It was ten of these unfortunates who ‘at a distance’ pleaded for Jesus to heal them. Of those ten, one was especially despised by the Jews for he was a Samaritan, a heretic, a foreigner. And yet he was the one, the only one, who returned to Jesus to thank him for the physical healing he, along with the others, had received. He prostrated himself before Jesus, praising God in a loud voice. Only to him, Jesus said: ‘Stand up, go on your way. Your faith has brought you salvation.’
‘Salvation’? What does that mean? Evidently, much more than physical cure. Like the other nine, he no longer had a skin disease. Unlike the other nine, he acknowledged and thanked Our Lord Jesus Christ as the agent of this divine healing.
This signalled that every aspect of his personality – bodily, socially, and relationship with God – had become integrated – was made whole. Being brought to this ‘holistic’ situation we call ‘salvation’.
So, was Princess Diana saved? (Fools rush in where angels fear to tread!) Was Princess Diana a conventionally good person? Yet, who can deny that in leaning over and kissing that AIDS sufferer, the untouchable of our society of some years ago, she profoundly imitated Jesus. It is permitted to pray that when she appears at the Last Judgment, Jesus may welcome her. To her famous perplexed and quizzical look, head slightly tilted, she may ask ‘How is it that you have welcomed me?’ Our Lord may well respond: ‘When I was stretched out on my bed of suffering, quarantined and ostracised by others, you leaned over and kissed me.’
So much for Lady Di. Why is this story ‘gospel’, good news for you and for me? First, there is nothing in my life which makes me ‘taboo’ to Jesus. If there is some part of my personality which needs healing, some dis-ease, something which makes me ill-at-ease with myself, other people, creation, or God, Jesus is only too willing to reach out to that part of me and start the process of ‘salvation’: integrating, making whole, the bodily, social and spiritual dimensions of my personality.
I have discovered this may take a lifetime because the dis-integrating forces which assail us can be very strong. Healing may take some time. In the meantime, one may become an agent or accomplice of Jesus Christ in ‘saving’ others. It happens when one reaches out towards someone who desperately needs the touch of my hand, the sound of my voice, a gesture of friendship to reassure them of their humanity. And then, like the tenth leper, we can both walk along the road to final salvation, praising God in a loud voice, praising God in Jesus Christ.
© Fr Michael Tate; mtate@bigpond.com, https//www.liturgyhelp.com/calendar/date/2025Oct12/0/HomMiTa