When we pray, most of us have no shortage of intentions. It's not at all hard to come up with a list of all the things we need – or at least, think we need. Some of us are more in touch with material needs, others with psychological or emotional needs, yet others with spiritual needs. Some think primarily in terms of theit own needs as individuals, while others think of their families, and yet others of the needs of community, of nation, of the world.

We are, in many respects, "needy" people. And even if our basic needs are being met, we live in a consumer society where the combination of rapid technological progress and hard-sell advertising conspire to create an infinitely expanding network of needs. I see this in myself at times. When I buy more books, I need new bookshelves. As my DVD library expands, I find myself buying new racks to keep them in. I upgraded my computer to Windows 10 – and now my iPhone 4 won’t talk to my computer. So now I need a new phone. I’m sure you get the picture!

With material things, the novelty wears off quickly. When we first get our new toy, we are grateful enough, but within a short period of time, it just sort of blends into the background of all the things in our life we take for granted. More seriously, the same thing can happen in relationships. When we fall in love, or when we make a new friend, or start a new job, we are caught up in the excitement of the moment. But as the honeymoon wears off, we end up seeing not the qualities that attracted us to the person in the first place, but their limitations and flaws as well. We get frustrated or angry ... or worse, bored and indifferent. We fail to see what we once saw clearly: that this person is a gift.

In today's Gospel, we meet ten very needy people. We are told that they are lepers. "Lepers" is just a word to us, but to the people of Jesus' time, a word full of dreadful meaning. In biblical times, sickness - and especially a disfiguring and debilitating skin disease like leprosy – was perceived as a punishment for sin. Because of the fear of contagion (which we now have learned is largely reduced by simple hygiene), lepers lived apart, forced to "keep their distance" from the entire community, cut off from their families. According to Jewish law, a person with leprosy was ritually impure: forbidden from entering the Temple or synagogue, offering sacrifice, sharing meals, even from praying. Morally, religiously, and socially, they were outcasts.

Put yourself in the shoes of these people, and know how intense, how single-minded their desire to be healed was. Not surprisingly, upon being healed, they followed Jesus' directions to the letter: "Go and show yourselves to the priests." Declared impure by the Law, they needed the action of the priest - prayer and ritual sacrifice - to be restored to their families and to the community. Their prayer had been answered. They might as well profit from it as soon as possible. So like Jesus, they are presumably heading off in the direction of Jerusalem, and wasting no time about it.

One person turns back - a Samaritan. Maybe he knew that in spite of his healing from leprosy, the priests would still treat him as an outcast, a hated heretic. Maybe he had no family to return to. We don't know exactly. But what we do know is that he responds differently. He praises God. He returns to Jesus, kneels at his feet to give thanks. He makes the connection between Jesus' action and the miraculous transformation in his life.

This is the difference between the Samaritan and the other nine lepers in today's Gospel. The first nine receive what they asked for - but for them, it's some kind of magic. Externally, they are healed of their disease, but deep down inside, they have not really changed. Because they want the result - the healing - they do as Jesus asks, but nothing more. "As they went along the way, they were made clean." Maybe they didn't even make the connection between the words of Jesus and their healing!

Lest we find this hard to believe, we might, on this Thanksgiving weekend, take a look at our own lives. There are so many blessings that we take for granted, that we barely even notice them. We get so busy and caught up within our own activities, that sometimes we don't even realize that God has answered our prayer. Or that he has given us something far better than we would ever have thought of asking for? It's not enough just to ask. We have to stick enough long enough to hear the answer, trusting that our God is a God of surprises, who may give us something far more or far different than what we might have imagined possible.

We also fail to realize that the greatest gift God has to offer us is not any "thing", but a relationship. This is what the Samaritan – and, for that matter, Naaman the Syrian in the first reading – has recognized. It isn't just that he is "more polite" than the others, has better manners. It's that he is able to look beyond the obvious gift (the physical healing), and cherish the Giver. In his healing, he experiences God's self-gift in the person of Jesus, and responds to this gift by giving thanks and praise. The Samaritan is a grateful person. And if we think of our relationship with God in terms of a circle, we see that the circle of gratefulness is incomplete until the generous Giver becomes the Receiver of our thanks and praise. When our hearts are grateful in this way, we become so much more capable of receiving all that God has to share with us.

And so, our prayer begins to shift. Trusting that God knows far better than we do what we need, we find ourselves asking less and less for "things" and more and more for the grace of entering into deeper and deeper relationship with God, for qualities such as faith, hope, love; healing, courage, and trust. In the famous Gospel passage where Jesus encourages his disciples to ask, to seek, to knock, he concludes with the exhortation: “if you who are imperfect know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will my Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.” The transformation which Christ desires to effect in each of us, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, is indeed the greatest gift of all, a gift to last. For then our whole life, including its sufferings as well as its joys, becomes a great thanksgiving. Through Christ, in the power of the Spirit, our very life becomes "Eucharist: taken and blessed, broken and shared, in thanks and praise.

As we celebrate the feast of Thanksgiving this weekend, may the spirit of thanks and praise, of deep gratefulness, dwell in our hearts the whole year through. We do well to thank God for his many gifts, for the beauty of creation, for the harvests of the earth, for all the material blessings we have received. But we do even better to thank God for his most precious gift of all: the gift of his very self in Jesus his Son, and in the indwelling Spirit. Let us make our own this beautiful prayer of St. Teresa of Avila, whose spirituality will be presented by Elizabeth Koessler as she launches our adult faith program for 2016-17 with a retreat this coming Saturday on the theme “Transformed by the Holy Spirit”. Nada te turbe … solo Dios basta.