Monday in the Fourth Week of Lent, March 11, 2024

John 4, 43-54

At that time Jesus left [Samaria] for Galilee. For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his native place. When he came into Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen all he had done in Jerusalem at the feast; for they themselves had gone to the feast.  Then he returned to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. Now there was a royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, who was near death. Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.” The royal official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” Jesus said to him, “You may go; your son will live.” The man believed what Jesus said to him and left. While the man was on his way back, his slaves met him and told him that his boy would live. He asked them when he began to recover. They told him, “The fever left him yesterday, about one in the afternoon.” The father realized that just at that time Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live,” and he and his whole household came to believe. Now this was the second sign Jesus did when he came to Galilee from Judea.

It turns out that I have pneumonia, so please pray for me!

St. John’s report seems to be of the same event chronicled in Matthew 8, 3-13 and Luke 7, 1-10, through there are differences.  John clearly indicates that the official came to Jesus in Cana, whereas Matthew and Luke tell us that Jesus was approached by him in Capernaum.  Still, the outlines of the accounts have striking similarities.  First, an official, certainly a Gentile comes to Jesus or sends a messenger to Jesus for his aid for someone dear to him in Capernaum.  Matthew and Luke call this person the official’s servant or slave while John calls him his “son”, but we should remember that in ancient Greek the word for “son” also meant “a young male slave”.  Other similarities include the Lord during the boy from afar.  We are left, however, with trying to reconcile such moments in the story as the Lord Jesus saying to the official, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe”, with the other accounts.  This seems like an undeserved reproach of the man for disbelief while in Matthew and Luke the Lord praises the man’s faith as greater that that which he had encountered in Israel.  It is possible that the Lord was speaking to the Jews around him at the time since he says, “You people, etc.”  The difficulties disappear if we follow the Fathers, such as St. John Chrysostom, Origen, and St. Augustine, who thought that the official in Matthew and Luke is distinct from the one here in John.  We might think that the miracle involving the cure of the centurion’s slave came first and that this cure followed afterwards, with the official in John not a centurion but an official in Herod’s court and so a Jew.  This man could have used the sickness of his slave (or son) as an excuse to test the Lord’s power and so he comes to him as he had heard the centurion had.  However, when the Lord rebukes him for his lack of faith, the man comes to his senses and fully realizes the danger his slave is in if the Lord does not cure him.  He repents on the spot and begs Jesus to help the boy, and when Jesus tells him that the boy will live, the man believes him.  On this occasion the Lord does not praise this man’s faith because it did not compare with the faith of the centurion.  John calls this the “second sign” the Lord performed after coming back from Samaria to Galilee, but he does not say this was his second miracle.  

Comparing and contrasting the cure of the centurion’s slave and the cure of the slave of the court official helps us to see that Jesus is willing to help both those with great faith and those with lesser faith: the former in order to increase the already great faith and the latter in order to strengthen what faith is already present and to help it to grow.  We regularly pray for cures and help for those in difficulty but do we do this in a perfunctory way or with the firm hope, the expectation, that Jesus will render the aid we ask for?  Jesus will help those for whom we pray, but he also wants to help us who pray for them.  We are most helped when we come before him with unwavering faith,  for as St. Augustine says, “Our Lord would have the mind of the believer so raised above all mutable things, as to seek even for miracles.”