Short-term or Long-term Faith?

 

October 12, 2025

While today’s first reading gives us only a selected portion of the story of Naaman the Syrian starting from where he dips himself in the River Jordan, I have included the entire story because it is in the context of the entire story that one gets a feel for what happened, and only then can the story speak to us.  

Why does Naaman get angry with the prophet Elisha.  As the story tells us: “But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy.”   Naaman had come with great hopes of being cured, and he expected that the prophet would do some great miraculous deed and show the power of his God and cure him.

But the prophet doesn’t make a big fuss over the issue; doesn’t come out with power and glory; and just sends a message to tell him to have a bath, but in the river Jordan. A real let-down for Naaman, and an insult to his importance.

This story of how Naaman reacted is perhaps reminiscent of how many of us desire God to act in our own lives.  We too want a God of glory and extraordinary power, and so we decorate our religious houses of worship (including Churches) and festivals with much pomp and splendour - sometimes so extravagant that one wonders whether these efforts are more for us, to show the world how great our God is, and so by implication how we are special, than it is to honour a God who doesn’t really need all this. And so many of want God to come to our aid in ways that go beyond human comprehension. This might explain why there are crowds of people (in all religions) going on often long, arduous and even costly journeys to places where miracles are said to happen, while ordinary religious places, close to home, where one can pray to the same God in quiet, are not pilgrimage centres.

Coming back to our story, when he is forced to confront the reality of his leprosy for which he can find no cure, Naaman has to learn a new way of living and worshipping of a God who does not come in power and glory.  Like the earlier prophet Elijah, who was a mentor to the prophet Elisha who is prophet referred to in today’s first reading, Naaman also had to learn that God does not come in a mighty wind or  in an earthquake or in a raging fire, but in sheer simplicity and silence. (see my earlier blog, How does God speak to us?August 13,  2023) 

And forced as he is into a situation of utter desperation, Naaman is finally willing to listen to his servants who go to him and ask him:“My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!”. In his broken state, Naaman overcomes his hurt ego, literally gets down from his high horse, and humbly enters the waters of the Jordan. 

A very human story, and a story that may have similarities to what many of us may have experienced in our own lives.  Like Naaman, sometimes when we are in a desperate situation, we are forced to reflect on our entire lives. And we have to make new choices. We have to re-visit our lives.  And like Naaman who had to agree to bathe in the waters of an unknown river of Israel and not in the rivers of Damascus that he was used to, without any guarantee that the new waters would heal him, we too have to tread new waters in humility.  

But for that whole new journey to begin, whether we choose to start on the new journey or not, we have to experience something that troubles us (big or small), that pushes us to question things, to make new choices.  If that experience is powerful enough we may be strengthened to change our lives completely and suddenly, in what we may refer to as an overnight conversion. 

However there is a weakness in such sudden conversions.  Thus we find in the story of Peter, James and John, that they experience a powerful and overwhelming experience when they are the special ones allowed to witness the glory of Jesus’ transfiguration.  But we all know what happens many months later, when Jesus is arrested - James and John run away, and Peter surreptitiously follows, but ends up denying Jesus three times. What happened to that powerful and divine revelation of Jesus to them?

In other words, if such an experience is not further rooted in a gradual and solid metanoia (i.e. change of heart), then like a sudden flash of lightning, the powerful experience dies away.  Thus despite living closely with Jesus, and experiencing all his wonderful miracles first hand, and despite the powerful transfiguration experience that three of them had, all the apostles, including the favoured ones, Peter, James and John, continued to discuss among themselves as to who would be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven (Luke 9:46). Their powerful, and not-so-powerful,  experiences did not seem to have changed them.  

I have seen that in people who experience sudden miracles, who are so filled with good intentions after their transformative experience, but then over the months and years that follow, they slowly revert to their old selves.  Actually this was a reality that Jesus himself noted, and that is why we read in John’s Gospel that when Jesus “was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name.  But then the Gospel goes on to say: But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew what was in men’s hearts”. (John 2:23-24)  So Jesus knew that the people who were astonished by his signs and wonders, were not really loyal or committed to his cause, because he knew how fickle such experiences are.  And so at another point when people come searching for him, he is convinced that they have come only because they have seen miracles, and he says bitterly, that “only an evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it.” (Mathew 12:39)

So we may have had an experience that has powerfully changed us, - and maybe even a series of smaller experiences that are meaningful - but unless we continue to build a strong base for that experience, the experience does not last. It’s like receiving a beautiful flowering plant from someone, but unless we take it home and re-plant it in nourishing soil and water it carefully as it needs to be watered, that beautiful flowering plant will die. In the same way, for those who choose to follow Christ, it is clear that if we do not translate that ‘miraculous’ experience into a life of active love of our neighbour, we may find ourselves falling back into our old ways.

After all, we do not know what happened to Naaman later - did he continue to worship the God of Israel? Or did he fall back into his old ways?  Neither do we know what happened to the nine lepers who were healed, but did not come back to thank Jesus.  Was that tenth leper whose miraculous and transformative experience pushed him to come back and commit himself to Jesus,  the only one who continued to grow and be healed even more? - for it was only to him that Jesus said: “your faith has made you well”.

First Reading: 2 Kings 5:14-17

Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.

Now bands of raiders from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”

Naaman went to his master and told him what the girl from Israel had said.  “By all means, go,” the king of Aram replied. “I will send a letter to the king of Israel.” So Naaman left, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten sets of clothing. The letter that he took to the king of Israel read: “With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy.”

As soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his robes and said, “Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of his leprosy? See how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me!”

When Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his robes, he sent him this message: “Why have you torn your robes? Have the man come to me and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel.”  So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house.  Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”

But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy.  Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.

Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!”  

So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.

Then Naaman and all his attendants went back to the man of God. He stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel. So please accept a gift from your servant.”

The prophet answered, “As surely as the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will not accept a thing.” And even though Naaman urged him, he refused.

“If you will not,” said Naaman, “please let me, your servant, be given as much earth as a pair of mules can carry, for your servant will never again make burnt offerings and sacrifices to any other god but the Lord.

Second Reading: 2 Timothy 2:8-13

Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel,  for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But God’s word is not chained.  Therefore, I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.

Here is a trustworthy saying:

If we died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him.
If we disown him, he will also disown us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.

Gospel: Luke 17:11-19

Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee.  As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy[a] met him. They stood at a distance  and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”

When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed.

One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice.  He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.

Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?  Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?”  Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”