Saturday in the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time, July 1, 2023

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.

St. Matthew’s account of the Lord’s cure of the centurion’s slave differs markedly from that of St. Luke, the only other Evangelist who gives it.  St. Luke provides a little more detail and emphasizes that the Jews interceded on behalf of the centurion.  Both accounts report the centurion’s remarkable declaration that he is not worthy for the Lord to come into his house to heal the slave and that he believe the Lord can heal even from far off.  Both accounts recount the Lord’s praise of the centurion’s faith, but Matthew goes further and presents the Lord comparing the lack of faith by the Jews to that shown by the Gentiles, and that the former will be lost and the latter will be saved.  It is quite a remarkable statement to read, as it must have been to hear.  This Gospel Reading also includes the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law and subsequent healings he administered in Capernaum.

“When Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion approached him.”  St. Luke tells us that the centurion did not speak directly to Jesus but through intermediaries.  This does not necessarily contradict Matthew’s account because “centurion approached him” could just as easily mean that he approached him through the Jews who spoke for him.  “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully.”  Luke tells us that the slave was sick and about to die while we learn in Matthew that he was also paralyzed.  There is no contradiction here either since each Evangelist tells us part of what was said but not the whole, which we can reconstruct: “My slave is paralyzed, suffering dreadfully, and is about to die.”  

“I will come and cure him.”  The Lord acts as though the centurion were doing him the favor of asking him to heal the servant, so willing is Jesus to go to him.  We can see in this the eagerness of the Son of God to be made man in order to die for our sins.  But we allow his very willingness to take what he has done for us for granted or to minimize it.  “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed.”  Luke lets us know that the centurion loved the Jewish nation and built the town’s synagogue.  We can infer from this that he knew that Jews were not allowed by the Law to go into the houses of Gentiles.  This may explain in part his reticence to have Jesus come to him, but he also makes an act of faith: “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.”  We should note that the centurion says, “I too am a man of authority.”  While the Jewish leaders challenge him and consider him an inferior, the Roman honors him as  an authority.

“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.”  The Israelites had been oppressed by many nations from the east, especially the Babylonians, who destroyed the Temple.  The Romans came from the west.  These represent the Gentiles.  They will recline at the banquet in heaven with the founders of the Jewish people, namely, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  “But the children of the Kingdom will be driven out into the outer darkness, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”  Those who complacently believed that their status as descendants of Abraham. Isaac, and Jacob entitled them to recline with them at the banquet but who did not possess the faith of their forefathers, would not only miss out on it, but be driven into hell.  They were positioned for glory, chosen by God, and they rejected him.  They preferred to return as slaves in Egypt and eat their meals there to the heavenly banquet.

“And at that very hour his servant was healed.”  Both the Hebrew and Greek words for “hour” can mean an unspecified time.  The sense is that the slave was healed at that time.

“He touched her hand, the fever left her.”  This healing contrasts with that of the centurion’s pagan slave in that the Lord healed him from afar, and he heals the Jewish mother-in-law through touching her.  The mother-in-law shows the response the Jews should have made to the Lord in his coming to them: “She rose and waited on him.”  

We must take great care that we not fall into complacency, thinking that we have done enough in our service to the Lord, but we should take the attitude of servants in the parable: “We are unprofitable servants; we have done only that which we ought to do” (Luke 17, 10).