‘No one was found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner.’
Do not fall into the concept that foreigner in Luke's Gospel means someone from elsewhere. The Samaritans lived very close to the Israelites and in faith and practice would have been almost indistinguishable from them. They did have arguments - bitter arguments - between each other about the content of the sacred scripture (what should or should not be read in synagogues) and about the advent of a Messiah. Our Lord needs us to apply his teaching to anyone whom we might find it to be uncomfortable to be with. Very often, the difficult ones are those who lead us closer to God. It can be hard to understand how, but patience and trust in the Lord will show us.
Saint Josaphat was born in the Polish province of Volhynia, of Orthodox parents. In 1595 the Union of Brest brought the Ruthenian Church into communion with Catholic Rome while still preserving its own liturgy. The result was a schism within the Ruthenian church itself, with one party wanting to remain Orthodox and in the orbit of Moscow and Constantinople, while the other accepted the Union. Matters were complicated by the presence of the Greek Uniates, a remnant of a century-old attempt at church union (who remain a living church to this day).
Josaphat joined the first monastery of the order of St Basil to be united to the Catholic Church: he was the first person to do so. He was ordained priest and, eventually and reluctantly, appointed bishop of Polotsk in 1617. Although Sigismund III Vasa, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, supported the union, the local aristocracy were against it because it threatened their control of ecclesiastical benefices. Plotting with the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, who visited the region in 1621, they stirred up trouble and as a result Josaphat was murdered by a mob in 1623 while on a pastoral visit to Vitebsk.
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