“Imagining the Gospel Scene” is a series from the Jesuit Media Lab. On occasional Sundays throughout this liturgical year, creators in the JML community will respond to the day’s Gospel passage through the practice of Ignatian contemplation, or what is sometimes called “imaginative prayer.”
In his Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius of Loyola invites participants to place ourselves in Gospel scenes using the imagination, relying on our senses to develop a distinctive, personal perspective on a given story — and thereby getting to know Christ better. After praying with the Gospel using their imaginations, our contributors will create a piece of art flowing from their experience — a painting, poem, short story, song, photograph or work in another medium.
In today’s installment, Allison Beyer reflects on Luke 17:11-19 with a prose poem.
Twenty-Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time: October 12, 2025 – Luke 17:11-19
Come By Here
The backlit figure descends
to where we wait
Frantic— See us!
Desperate— Touch us!
Healing Wholeness Belonging
What are they to me
but a dream?
At night, asleep, I dream
of the child I’ve never held:
a blur of features, smeared ink across the page.
She is crying. I cannot lift her.
No crime have I committed
save for suffering,
and for that I must pay.
UNCLEAN!— My neighbors hissed at me, a fever pitch
when I could no longer hide my disease.
When my wife’s belly was a full moon
and my despair,
an open wound, a black pit that
would swallow us whole.
Exiled before the babe was born
Before the grain was gathered from the fields
Before I could sing the blessing and speak her name at her birth.
My life was a story once. And I was in it. Then, disease
struck like a match, held to the parchment of an unfolding life— flames
scorching, devouring every point of connection. I was reduced to ashes, my life
charred sentences disjointed phrases dismembered plots
holes holes holes
But who is this now? This figure descending
Who comes to us
A collection of outcasts
Deported from life held in common
Ripped from the fabric of society and forbidden from the intimacy
of shared meals, shared cups. Marriage beds. An infant asleep against the chest. The entire hand of a child curled around a single finger. Tracing earlobes, dimples, eyebrows.
This aching might be the death of me.
What is he saying? —Draw near? Draw near…
I can see his mouth moving through my tears.
I hear a strained voice, my own, sobbing out
—Teacher! Have pity on me!
But he does not respond with pity, no.
He responds with power.
Shared.
In disbelief, we take off, running. Towards the temple. To liberation
from this curse
of numb limbs and
spirits. Towards
integration.
But I can’t get over the feel of my fleshy feet
Landing lightly, pushing off, steady, against the road
again and again and again and again.
I do not trip. I do not stumble or drag, hobble or limp.
I race.
And just like that, I turn back, towards the figure who
healed us without second thought, price nor debt to repay. He could have taken any other path. But he came our way. He came by and healed ten, when he needn’t have healed even one.
Now, when I fall to my knees, it is my will alone that bends them. A heap of gratitude.
A heap at his feet, I praise.
It is as though he can see through me, beyond to
the courtyard across the valley
where my wife is hanging clothes on the line,
our child between her legs, the pale light of morning
brushing every hair curve dewy grass with
gold gold gold
The sunbird takes his branch. His turquoise plumage, brilliant. Iridescent violet shimmers. His dark beak parts. The song enters my ears and
He gives me his hand, lifts me to standing
whole whole whole
Presses bread into my palm, brings drink to my lips.
With a kiss on each cheek, firm hands on my shoulders, eyes brimming with tears,
He sends me
home.
And you better believe I run and I run and I run and I run
Until I collapse
into the arms of the ones I love,
into the story of my life
Returning, and I
in it.