朋友们，今天的福音描述主治愈了十个癞病人，其中只有一个回来致谢。癞病在古时候让人恐惧，就好像现在那些有传染性又古怪的病一样。但不仅如此，癞病人被视为不洁净，因此无法参与崇拜活动。在古以色列时代，负责检查病人的是神父，这并非偶然。当时神父的职责是要监控以色列人的整个崇拜过程，当然包括决定谁能够以及谁不能进入圣殿。

 

为什么崇拜如此重要？崇拜意味着我们要以永生的天主为重心来安排生活的全部内容，从而使得我们的内心世界和外在环境都变得条理井然。崇拜意味着我们要以行动来向自己表明人生的终极意义。不是天主需要我们的崇拜，而是我们非常需要崇拜天主。

 

Friends, today's Gospel recounts the Lord's healing of ten lepers, only one of whom comes back to give thanks. Leprosy frightened people in ancient times, just as contagious and mysterious diseases frighten people today. But, more than this, leprosy rendered someone unclean and therefore incapable of engaging in the act of worship. It is not accidental that the person responsible for examining the patient in ancient Israel was the priest. The priest's job was to monitor the whole process of Israelite worship, very much including who could and couldn't participate in the Temple.

 

What is so important about worship? To worship is to order the whole of one's life toward the living God, and, in doing so, to become interiorly and exteriorly rightly ordered. To worship is to signal to oneself what one's life is finally about. Worship is not something that God needs, but it is very much something that we need.