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Bishop's Homily for the Twenty-Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time

October 11, 2025

(FamVeld / Shutterstock.com)

Homily of the Most Reverend Larry Silva, Bishop of Honolulu
[Sts. Peter and Paul Church, Honolulu (Installation of Pastor)]

I remember when my nephew was about 5 or 6 years old, I went to his house for his birthday party. I had a gift under my arm, and when he saw me, he immediately went to grab the gift, without saying anything to me. I sensed this was a good time for a lesson, so I held on to the gift and said, “Hi, Uncle Larry! It’s good to see you!  Thanks for coming to my birthday party.” My nephew got it! He realized that greeting me first was more important than grabbing my gift.  And, of course, he still received the gift!

Now we can understand this coming from an excited little boy at his birthday party, but sometimes we can act the same way.  I cannot imagine that the nine persons with leprosy who were healed by Jesus but did not return to him were not grateful. I am sure they went to their families and friends to reconnect with them and to rejoice in their newly restored health. And, of course, I cannot imagine that Jesus withdrew the gift of healing from them simply because they did not return to thank him. But the point is, these nine were grateful for the gift, while the Samaritan was grateful first to the one who gave the gift.

The same could be said of Naaman, who was a Syrian general, but who went to the land of Israel because a Hebrew slave girl told him he could be healed there. He was, of course, focused on what he wanted, healing from leprosy.  And he was even upset that Elisha the prophet told him he could be healed by plunging seven times in the Jordan River. His own country had better rivers, so why was the Jordan so special?  But after his servants urged him to obey Elisha, he was healed. At first he wanted to show his gratitude to Elisha by offering a gift, but Elisha knew that he was not the healer, God was. In the end, Naaman recognized that it was indeed the God of Israel who healed him, and he wanted to take a bit of the Holy Land back to Syria so that on that sacred ground he could worship the God of Israel.

It is easy for us to be grateful for gifts we receive, but to forget to focus on the One who gives the gifts.  We all have talents and abilities, which we work very hard to develop and hone. We can be vaguely thankful for the gift of education and for the opportunities presented to us. But do we thank God for these abilities and opportunities, since all good gifts are from him? Perhaps we are healed of a serious health issue, and we are grateful not to be sick anymore, but do we thank God for the healing?

I think the Word of God is challenging us today to be grateful not just for the gifts we receive, which are countless, but for the Giver of those gifts, who is God himself. It is such an attitude that Jesus commends in the Samaritan, the foreigner, who was healed of his leprosy.

As we search for the gift of peace in the world, we may pray very hard. We may follow political and diplomatic negotiations, which are real gifts for establishing true peace. But unless we are grateful to God – a gratitude based sometimes on what we do not yet see – we will never achieve true peace through merely human efforts.

Sometimes something we once treasured goes awry. A marriage, once entered into with such romantic joy, can become a burden. A relationship we once valued can turn sour over some real or imagined slight. Yet perhaps the best remedy to these situations is to be grateful to the giver of these gifts, God himself, because when we are grateful, he can change things for us and bring us true healing and peace.

This is why the Church is so insistent upon our coming here to the Eucharist – this sacrifice of thanksgiving – every Sunday, if not more often.  Here we can not only recount the gifts God has given us, but we can lift up our hearts to give thanks and praise to God, the Giver of these gifts. And not only do we bond more closely with the true Giver of all gifts, but in the process, he multiplies the gifts for us, so that we can call others to this sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise. Among the many things you pastor is called to do, this is the most important: calling people to this banquet of thanksgiving, so that he may lead us all in lifting our hearts and voices to give thanks to the One who is the Giver of all good gifts.