At first reading, today’s Gospel may seem like a simple children’s story, with a very obvious lesson: always remember to say thank you! Ten lepers are healed, but only one – the Samaritan, the outsider – comes back to give thanks. Jesus praises him: “Your faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:19).

But when we look more closely, things are not so simple. The other nine lepers – who do not return to thank Jesus – are healed as well. Their ingratitude does not take away from the generosity of God. This detail, which seems at first to spoil the “moral of the story,” may in fact be the most important part. God gives freely, to all – good and bad, Jew and Samaritan, grateful and ungrateful alike.

And that is the heart of Christian charity. We do not care for others because they are good, or faithful, or belong to our own group. We care because God cares. Our charity is for Christian and atheist, Muslim and Hindu, saint and sinner, neighbour and stranger. We do not give in order to convert, or to win favour, but because God’s love has already been given to us in abundance.

There is a striking example from history. In the fourth century, the Roman emperor Julian – called “the Apostate” because he abandoned the faith – tried to revive the old pagan religion of Rome. He saw how the Church was thriving, and he thought he had discovered its secret. The Christians, he noticed, didn’t just look after their own poor; they cared for anyone in need. He famously complained: “These impious Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours also.” So Julian tried to copy this. He set up a system of welfare and charity, hoping to match the Church. But his project failed. Why? Because Christians were not running soup kitchens as a recruitment campaign, or giving alms as a publicity stunt. Their charity sprang from the love of Christ, who gave himself for all. Christian love is not a tool of conversion – it is the natural fruit of gratitude to God.

That is why our giving must be generous and unconditional. We do not help the hungry only if they share our faith. We do not send aid to the suffering only if they belong to our nation. We help because Christ has helped us. We give because we have received. St John Henry Newman, who will be proclaimed a Doctor of the Church next month, gives us a more recent example. Newman was a great scholar, a thinker and a preacher, but he also spent forty years as a parish priest in Birmingham. He worked in the slums, visited the sick during outbreaks of cholera, defended workers who were about to lose their jobs because of their faith, and paid for medicine and coal for the poor. When he died, a Protestant writer described him as “a Roman Cardinal in title, but the light and guide of a multitude of grateful hearts outside his own communion.” Newman’s charity did not discriminate. He served because Christ had first served him.

So the lesson of today’s Gospel is not only about gratitude – though gratitude is vital. It is about the way God gives, and the way we are called to give. God pours out blessings on the thankful and the thankless alike. He gives even when he is ignored or rejected. And we, too, must learn to give without counting the cost, and without demanding thanks in return.

“No one has returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” (Luke 17:18).

In this foreigner, the Samaritan, we see the beauty of gratitude and the power of faith. But in the nine who walk away, still healed, we see something just as great – the endless mercy of God, who gives to all. May our lives of charity, generosity, and gratitude reflect that same mercy today.