Monday in the First Week of Advent, November 28, 2021

Matthew 8, 5-11

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.”

“ ‘Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully.’ He said to him, ‘I will come and cure him.’ ”  There are four things to recognize here: that the Gentile centurion called Jesus Kyrie, that is, not “teacher” as the Jews usually did, but “Lord”; that Jesus allowed a Gentile to speak to him; how readily the Lord answered in the affirmative, with hardly any apparent thought; and that Jesus did not say, I will go pray for him, but “I will come and cure him.”  The Gentiles (and Jewish outcasts) who came in contact with Jesus called him “Lord” while the Pharisees, who scrutinized  his ever move, including his cures and exorcisms, would only call him “teacher”.  St. Matthew includes this detail in his account to shame the Judeans and Pharisees and to help the Galilean Christians understand why the Gentiles were converting.

Jesus allowed the Gentiles to approach him and converse with them.  The Jews loathed the Gentiles and considered them the source of all the wrong that had happened to Israel.  They were also uncircumcised, unclean outsiders.  But the Lord Jesus mixed with the Gentiles even at the time of his Birth when the Magi from Arabia came to him.  The Lord even says at the end of today’s Gospel reading, “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.”

Jesus heard the centurion’s request and stated his readiness to go and cure the servant.  The Lord does not hesitate.  He does not ask questions or set conditions.  He even seems ready to enter the centurion’s house, which the Jews were not permitted to do.  If the Lord can praise the centurion later for his faith, we should praise Jesus even more for the abundance of his mercy.

The Lord said, “I will come and cure him,”  He knows what he will do: he will cure the servant immediately.  That is, he will not offer him gradual healing or partial healing, which was the most a physician could do.  He will cure him the instant he sees him.  The servant, lying in his death bed, will stand up right away and go about serving as though he had never been sick in the first place.  This was the case with St. Peter’s mother-in-law.  

All of this speaks to the great love of Jesus for everyone, and his power to show that love in healing us, whether from physical illness or from sin.