Several years ago, a Chicago High school student went to Nicaragua during his summer vacation to do volunteer work. He accompanied a medical team to a tiny mountain village. Life in the village was primitive. The medical team vaccinated the villagers against polio, measles, and many other diseases. The high school student found the whole situation heart breaking he started feeling sorry even guilty for the condition these people lived in. He became homesick and depressed. One night as he was sitting outside in the darkness, he was thinking about his home, his girlfriend and asking himself why people had to live like this, whose fault was it? Why did God permit it? Then he heard someone move in the darkness. It was Jose Santos, the local schoolteacher, the father of the family he lived with. He sat down beside the student and after a minute Jose broke the silence and said: Isn’t great all that God has given us. His eyes were staring at the sky and when the student looked up, he hadn’t noticed that the sky was lit up with millions of stars. Never had he felt so thankful for all that God has given him. Never had he felt so loved. This story highlights the two groups of people Jesus speaks about in the gospel today: people who are grateful for what God has given them and those who are ungrateful. The story also illustrates that if children grow up to be ungrateful it’s probably because they were never taught to be grateful. This high school student became grateful because Jose Santos taught him to be grateful. Several years ago I visited Washington and went to Arlington cemetery to visit the grave of John F. Kennedy. Right in front of the grave you have a large plaque with snippets from his speeches and one of these phrases was from his inaugural address on Capitol Hill in 1961 – “Ask not what you’re …” Sometimes I think we have created another phrase – “what can everyone do for me”. We became very self-centred. Because of all the challenges that we are facing now, we are  invited to live a simpler lifestyle, to live each day as it comes and to be grateful for having enough. Let’s pray that during these challenging times we will never fail to appreciate the good things that we have. Many times, it happens that it is only in their absence that we understand and appreciate how precious certain gifts are health, family, faith, community, friendship, etc. How many of us use the word thanks during the day?  If you were one of the ten cured by Jesus, would you have returned? Let’s never fail to appreciate all the good things that God has given us, and we have so much to be grateful for. If we are not grateful, if we fail to appreciate those who help us, we could be in danger of sinking deeper into our insensitivity, negativity, and selfishness. Today’s gospel invites us to ask ourselves two things: To which group of people do we belong? To those who are grateful like the Samaritan or to those who are ungrateful like the other nine lepers? Second are we teaching our children to be grateful? Let’s close with a very short prayer: “O God, you have given us so much. Give us one more thing – a grateful heart”