Today’s first reading recounts the cure of Naaman the Syrian; in the Gospel, our Lord declares: “There were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman.”

The story of Naaman shows how easily we conflate the extraordinary with the things of God – a tendency which has led, no doubt, to many wrong discernments. Naaman was expecting invocations, prodigies; the instruction to bathe in the Jordan scandalizes his religious sensibility. Yet he rises from the waters made whole, an Old Testament type of the cleansing and incorporation into Christ, available to all, effected by baptism.

Grace perfects nature. A sound nature and enlightened human living are prerequisites for spiritual growth and advancement. As Christians – indeed, as humans – we must cultivate prudential right order and responsibility. A mysticism of the simple, the ordinary, was the witness of Thérèse of Lisieux, “the greatest saint of modern times.” Proper handwashing to halt the spread of infectious disease, courtesy on the roads, keeping appointments, seem more like holiness to me than any esoteric and supererogatory devotion.

It was Naaman’s ample natural virtue [, supported by the community around him – the piety of his wife’s servant, the wisdom of his own servant, the politically risky intervention of his king, Elisha’s fidelity to mission – ]which disposed him to receive the gift of healing. Naaman, a Gentile eight hundred years before Christ, is the man with ten talents, the good and faithful servant; he goes forth healed, bearing with him soil of the Holy Land on which to worship, illustrating the words of St. Basil from today’s Office of Readings: “Here is man’s greatness, here is man’s glory and majesty: to know in truth what is great, to hold fast to it, and to seek glory from the Lord of glory.” Thus Jesus invokes Naaman in proclaiming His messianic mission – in which, through Him, salvation is open to all, and everything authentically human is ennobled unto divinity itself.