Saturday in the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time, June 25, 2022

Matthew 8, 5-17

When Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion approached him and appealed to him, saying, “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully.” He said to him, “I will come and cure him.” The centurion said in reply, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man subject to authority, with soldiers subject to me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come here,’ and he comes; and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Amen, I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I say to you, many will come from the east and the west, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the banquet in the Kingdom of heaven, but the children of the Kingdom will be driven out into the outer darkness, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.” And Jesus said to the centurion, “You may go; as you have believed, let it be done for you.” And at that very hour his servant was healed. Jesus entered the house of Peter, and saw his mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He touched her hand, the fever left her, and she rose and waited on him. When it was evening, they brought him many who were possessed by demons, and he drove out the spirits by a word and cured all the sick, to fulfill what had been said by Isaiah the prophet: He took away our infirmities and bore our diseases.

The striking down of the nearly fifty year old Supreme Court opinion this morning gives us great cause for rejoicing and for giving thanks to Almighty God.  This comes not from the hard work of a day or a month or a year, but from fifty years of struggle from the grass roots up.  At the same time, the decision is not the end of our labor but a signal for us to carry on, with the help of God, in changing the hearts of those who do not respect unborn human life, but call it a baby or a mere zygote or fetus depending upon whose it is.  We must also now work on the state level for the passing of laws that protect human life, and to make even more of an effort to assist those pregnant in difficult circumstances.  Of course, the most necessary action we can take is to pray for the conversion of our society.

“When Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion approached him and appealed to him.”  St. Matthew presents this miracle story as early in the Lord’s Public Life.  It is the first miracle that he performs for a Gentile.  A centurion will also be present at the end of his Public Life as he died on the Cross.  Just as the centurion in today’s Gospel reading will make a profession of faith, so will the centurion on Golgotha: “Indeed this was the Son of God” (Matthew 27, 54).  In both cases, Matthew shows the faith of Gentiles surpassing that of the Lord’s own people.

“Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully.”  In St. Luke’s telling of the story, Jewish leaders approach Jesus on the centurion’s behalf.  Perhaps the centurion came to the town but stood back, or went even outside the town, after engaging the Jewish leaders to speak for him.  The centurion shows himself as a good model for us in that he goes to the Lord Jesus for help for another person.  He goes to some trouble to do this as well, since his post would have been some distance from Capernaum.  When he comes before the Lord, he speaks with respect and proper deprecation: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof.”  He speaks clearly and directly.  He does not try to bargain with the Lord to do as he asks, but leaves it to him whether he will help him or not.  Because the Jews had as little to do with the Gentiles as possible, no one would fault the Lord for not helping the man.  Yet the Lord is glad to go and does not hesitate.  We see in this his eagerness to assume our human nature so as to come among us, with all our sins and uncleanness.  

“I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.”  This saying seems to indicate that the Lord had already spent considerable time preaching and healing.  If so, his saying this would have struck the Jews as all the more remarkable.  The Lord uses this occasion to then declare: “ I say to you, many will come from the east and the west, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the banquet in the Kingdom of heaven, but the children of the Kingdom will be driven out into the outer darkness, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”  From the west: the Greeks and the Romans; from the east: the inhabitants of what used to be Israel’s most destructive foes, Assyria and Babylon.  People from these nations, all of which had conquered Israel and occupied it, would come together to recline at the banquet in the Kingdom of heaven alongside the founders of the Jewish people: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  These people of faith would show themselves to be true members of the Chosen People not by their being Jewish but by their steadfast belief in Jesus as God.  At the same time, “the children of the Kingdom will be driven out.”  The Jews who do not believe will not be saved on account of their genealogies, but will be condemned “the outer darkness, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”  This could also be translated as “the outmost darkness”.  That is, driven out so far that they cannot see the walls of the Kingdom or hear the noise of the revelry within them.  They sit in darkness since the light of faith is not in them and they rejected the Light of the world.  They wail in the pain that is inflicted on them by the demons, and they gnash their teeth in their guilt.

“You may go; as you have believed, let it be done for you.”  Here we see the necessity for faith when we pray.  Sometimes we doubt when we pray for help.  We doubt that God will help us, or that he can help us, or that the help will prove insufficient.  We should not come before Almighty God like this, but to be ready to ask for the faith we need in order to pray for that which we need, imitating the desperate father of a possessed child: “I do believe! Help my unbelief!” (Mark 9, 24).

At the end of the following account of the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, St. Matthew quotes the Prophet Isaiah: “He took away our infirmities and bore our diseases” (Isaiah 53, 4).  As the Jewish Christians reading this Gospel would have known, the verse after this reads: “But he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his bruises we are healed.”  Matthew reminds the people that their Messiah, Jesus, did not conform himself to the expectations of the Pharisees but came precisely so that he could suffer and die for us.  The verse Matthew quotes tells us that even in healing the sick, Jesus suffered: “He bore our diseases”.  The Greek text of this quote should be translated: “He received our weaknesses and bore our diseases.”  He was afflicted in some way by the afflictions he cured.  He paid a price for his acts of love.  This helps us to understand a little better his sufferings in his Passion, which came from taking upon himself the sins of the world.