Monday in the 24th Week of Ordinary Time, September 18, 2023

Luke 7, 1-10

When Jesus had finished all his words to the people, he entered Capernaum. A centurion there had a slave who was ill and about to die, and he was valuable to him. When he heard about Jesus, he sent elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and save the life of his slave. They approached Jesus and strongly urged him to come, saying, “He deserves to have you do this for him, for he loves our nation and he built the synagogue for us.” And Jesus went with them, but when he was only a short distance from the house, the centurion sent friends to tell him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof. Therefore, I did not consider myself worthy to come to you; but say the word and let my servant be healed. For I too am a person 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 at him and, turning, said to the crowd following him, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” When the messengers returned to the house, they found the slave in good health.

“When Jesus had finished all his words to the people, he entered Capernaum.”  Due to the multitudes who came to hear him (cf. Luke 5, 19), the Lord Jesus took to preaching outside the towns apart from the Sabbath when he preached in synagogues.  He had preached a considerable time.  He needed to rest and the people had much to digest and discuss.  However, when the Lord reentered Capernaum in order to return to Peter’s house, probably for the main midday meal, a Roman centurion “sent elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and save the life of his slave.”  St. Matthew, in his account of this event, gives it that the centurion himself came and conversed with Jesus.  Matthew, much more interested in the miracles as stamps of divine authority on what the Lord has just taught or what he was about to teach, compresses the action without changing the story.  Now, this slave was about to die and the centurion had heard, presumably through his servants, about the Lord’s healing powers.  Luke notes that the centurion considered the slave valuable, as possessing some great talent or skill or possibly he had won the centurion’s favor through his cheerful or humorous personality.  “He deserves to have you do this for him, for he loves our nation and he built the synagogue for us.”  Luke gives us more detail about this incident, quoting the elders as to why the Lord should perform this healing.  Now, this is interesting because the Lord had never refused to heal anyone to this point and had indeed labored through the night to heal those who came to him.  But the elders are concerned that Jesus, clearly a righteous Jew in their eyes, might decline to help a Gentile, particularly a Roman officer.

“And Jesus went with them.”  He does not hesitate.  He seems to accede to the wishes of the elders, but in fact he will not deny the humble prayer of one who believes in him, especially when it comes on behalf of another.  “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof. Therefore, I did not consider myself worthy to come to you.”  Quite a crowd must have accompanied the Lord so that the centurion’s other servants could see them approaching, or one of the Jews went ahead to the house to let the centurion know that Jesus was coming.  He would have stood outside the house, for the Law prevented the Jews from entering the houses of Gentiles.  The centurion, fully aware of this, does not want to impose on the Lord.  Before he even sent the elders to the Lord he did not expect him to come himself, lest he render himself unclean.  But his belief in his power made him understand that the Lord could heal from a distance as well as personally: “But say the word and let my servant be healed.”  He explains himself lest he offend the Lord as though he were not welcome: “For I too am a person 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 at him.”  That is, Jesus registered amazement for the benefit of the Jews who accompanied him so that they might consider what the centurion had said and what it meant as to who Jesus was.  “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” His statement would have confused the Jews.  “Such faith” is what, or in whom?  But the Lord now shows that the centurion deserved for him to heal his slave not because he had built the synagogue in Capernaum but because he believed in Jesus: “When the messengers returned to the house, they found the slave in good health.”  The slave recovered his health immediately and without any need of time to regain his strength.  The Apostles would use this, as the Evangelists used it, to show the Gentiles that even early on his ministry the Lord cared for and praised the emergent faith of all, Jew and Gentile alike.

We ought to consider the strength of our faith and to study the Scriptures with an eye to increasing our knowledge of the Lord, and then to pray to him, speaking to him freely.  He is not faraway, though if he were, it would not seem so to us.  He desires our intimacy so that our faith in him might grow.