Catholic Commentary
The Cleansing of the Ten Lepers (Part 2)
19Then he said to him, “Get up, and go your way. Your faith has healed you.”
Luke 17:19 records Jesus telling a healed Samaritan leper, "Your faith has healed you," using language that signifies spiritual salvation rather than mere physical cure. The distinction emphasizes that the Samaritan alone experienced true wholeness through his grateful return and recognition of Jesus, while the other nine lepers received only ceremonial cleansing.
The Samaritan leper was healed twice — once by Jesus' word, but saved only by his return; faith is not passive reception but the audacious turning back to say thank you.
Catholic tradition reads this verse through the lens of integral healing — the union of bodily and spiritual restoration that reflects the Church's sacramental life. The Catechism teaches that "Christ's compassion toward the sick and his many healings of every kind of infirmity are a resplendent sign that 'God has visited his people' and that the Kingdom of God is close at hand. Jesus has the power not only to heal, but also to forgive sins" (CCC 1503). The distinction between the nine cleansed lepers and the one saved leper maps precisely onto this: cleansing without faith is a physical benefit; cleansing with faith, gratitude, and encounter with Christ is salvation.
St. Ambrose, commenting on this passage in his Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucam, notes that the Samaritan "received more than what he sought — he came seeking health of body, he received health of soul." This insight illuminates the Catholic theology of the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick, which the Church explicitly grounds in Luke's healing narratives. The Catechism states: "The grace of this sacrament... is a gift of the Holy Spirit, whose anointing takes away sins and the remnants of sin, and also comforts, strengthens and heals the sick person" (CCC 1520).
Origen saw in the ten lepers a figure of those who receive baptismal cleansing but do not press on to full discipleship. The returning Samaritan represents those who not only receive the sacrament but respond with the eucharistic gratitude (eucharistia — thanksgiving) that is the mark of a living faith. The very structure of his return — cleansed on the road, returning to give thanks, falling at the feet of Christ — mirrors the structure of the Eucharist itself: we receive, we return, we worship.
This verse confronts contemporary Catholics with a pointed question: are we among the nine or the one? Catholic life offers many channels of grace — sacraments, prayers answered, burdens lifted, healings received — and the temptation is to receive these gifts and "go on our way" without returning to give explicit thanks to their divine source. Jesus does not rebuke the nine for their ingratitude alone; their failure to return is also a failure to complete the healing. They were cleansed of leprosy; they were not made whole.
Practically, this verse recommends a regular and serious examination of conscience around gratitude. Have you received healing — physical, emotional, relational, spiritual — and attributed it to medicine, therapy, luck, or your own effort rather than to God? The Samaritan's "loud voice" of praise was public and unashamed. Catholics are invited to cultivate the same vocal, embodied gratitude in the liturgy, in personal prayer, and in witness to others. The Eucharist — whose very name means "thanksgiving" — is the normative Christian response to every grace received. To participate in the Mass with genuine awareness of what has been given is to be, weekly, the returning Samaritan.
Commentary
Luke 17:19 — "Get up, and go your way. Your faith has healed you."
The command "Get up" (anastas) is the same verb used elsewhere in Luke for resurrection and rising — a detail that is almost certainly deliberate. Jesus does not simply affirm the cure that has already occurred; he pronounces something more. The Samaritan leper had already been cleansed along with the other nine while they were still on the road (v. 14). So when Jesus says "your faith has healed you" (hē pistis sou sesōken se), he cannot be referring only to the physical cleansing already granted to all ten. The Greek sōzō carries its full theological weight here: to save, to make whole, to rescue from perdition. This is the language of eschatological salvation, not merely medical recovery.
This distinction is the heart of the passage. Ten lepers were cleansed; one was saved. The difference was the Samaritan's return. He "turned back" (hupestrepsen, v. 15), a word that in the Septuagint and in Luke's own usage frequently carries the sense of conversion — a turning back toward God. He fell at Jesus' feet, the posture of worship and adoration (cf. Luke 5:12; 8:41). He glorified God with a loud voice. In short, he did what liturgical worship does: he recognized the source of his healing, returned to give thanks, and prostrated himself before the divine Physician.
The phrase "your faith has healed you" appears identically in three other healing accounts in Luke's Gospel: the sinful woman (7:50), the hemorrhaging woman (8:48), and the blind beggar Bartimaeus (18:42). In each case, faith is not merely intellectual assent but a turning of the whole person toward Christ that opens the recipient to God's saving power. Faith here is relational, enacted, embodied — it is expressed in the Samaritan's return, his posture, his praise, and his recognition of Jesus as the agent of divine mercy.
The Samaritan's ethnic identity deepens the typological significance. Samaritans were regarded by Jews as ritually impure foreigners — doubly outcast compared to the Jewish lepers who shared his disease. Yet he alone returns. Luke, writing for a predominantly Gentile audience, is clearly signaling that the Gospel breaks ethnic and religious boundaries. The outsider, the foreigner, the one regarded as having a deficient faith — he is the one whose gratitude constitutes a complete act of faith. This prefigures the universal mission of the Church, where salvation is offered to all nations and those considered far from God are found to be nearest to him.
Catholic Commentary