God wants to put a melody to the hymns of each of our lives. And God wants us all to bolster each other as we sing together those hymns. Every single person in this church today has a hymn to sing from the text of your life. Every person here has a story to tell of where you are at this moment in your faith. God’s grace wants to enter that story and sing it as a hymn. And God wants us all to join in singing that hymn together, so we can bolster each other in faith.

One glorified God in a loud voice and fell in gratitude at the feet of Jesus. Nine were never heard from again. Every commentary on the Bible, and every homily or sermon on this passage (Luke 17:11-19) I could find, condemns the nine and exalts the one. Why? What was the sin of the nine? Their sin was silence when the situation clearly called for action that glorified God and gave public witness to the work of God in their lives.
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The readings today remind us of the need to reaffirm the “gratitude attitude”… for us to have a thankful heart … for us to bring thankfulness to our relationship to God. 

If you want faith, learn to trust God in small things and big alike; learn to trust that God has a plan and it is being worked out in our midst, even if you or I don’t see it or understand it.  You and I — and our anxieties — are not the center of the universe (as disappointing as that truth may be): God is.  Learn to believe that truth and your faith will be increased!
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26th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Why would anyone “choose” hell? It is one’s own choice. Of course most people do not make the choice of hell explicitly; people choose hell passively by choosing other things above God. What kinds of choices lead people into hell? There is a stereotypical list of mortal sins, but nothing is said about the rich man in this story being sexually immoral or running an abortion clinic. This is a story of a man who chooses hell when he chooses to do nothing.
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23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Discipleship always takes place within a given socio-political climate, and Christian discipleship is not primarily a temporal political endeavor. Discipleship will always be subversive when it is properly understood and practiced. This is because no earthly socio-political structure is ever conformed totally to the Kingdom of God. When a nation-state is relatively “good” it is still not worthy of ultimate allegiance. When a nation-state is oppressive (and many Christians have suffered under such in the Church’s history), God’s people still obey the government to the extent they can––but all the more give ultimate allegiance to the King whose Kingdom goes beyond anything we can yet fully imagine.
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Humility is the route to true happiness. Humble heart, contrite heart— that is the route to greatness. That’s the point of the parable. So the lesson we learn from the gospel (http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/082816.cfm) today is about humility—how you and I and all of us need some humility in our lives.