A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.
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Today’s gospel (Matthew 8: 5-11) sees once more the incident
of the curing of the centurion’s servant which we heard on 16th
September. What informed the centurion’s confidence was not his vestigial Roman
religion, but his understanding of how military authority worked. Jesus spoke
and acted as one with authority. That the centurion’s Roman mind could see a
lot more clearly than many of the children of the Father’s own house. Faith and
humility are two of the virtues that Colwelians honour in Mary our Mother, and
they are enshrined deeply in this gospel scene of the centurion’s request for
his servant's healing.
I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline
at table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.
These were perhaps shocking words to Jesus’ listeners, grown fat with pride on the predilection of God’s favour. If many
will come from east and west to the kingdom, just what did it mean to be a
descendant of Abraham in the faith, they might have asked? What was the point
of all their faithfulness, if its reward was not to be exclusive to them? It is
the pride of the eldest brother of the prodigal son. It is the jealousy evoked
by the rewards given to the workers of the eleventh hour.
But there is a warning here in Jesus’ words for all
believers not to impose human measures on divine plans. It is a warning which
holds true for us now. We look for certitudes when we are invited to
confidence. We want estimates when our minds could not even begin to fathom the
exactitude of the divine knowledge which knows every hair upon the head of the
most hirsute among us. Some things - many things even – we cannot encompass,
nor should we seek to. It is enough to know they are in the divine hands. If
this is a warning not to look down our noses like the elder brother of the
prodigal son, it is also a caution not to place others on pedestals, which we
do likewise to sure up our insecurities, for this too is the result of human
measures run wild. The poverty-stricken widow of last Monday’s gospel was probably
the holiest woman to set foot in the temple that year, apart from the Blessed
Mother. As for the phylacteried Pharisee, suppurating with feigned piety, let
us leave his status and his destiny to the mercy of God.
But the lesson Jesus serves today with regard to the need
for humility comes precisely from the centurion’s exceptional faith, a faith
that exceeded all the human estimations of what was possible. We cannot believe
this was the end point of the centurion’s faith either. Beyond this healing,
would he not have heard an even steadier, deeper call from God, urging him to
let that mustard seed of confidence in Christ grow into faith in the Father of
all, and thus to go up to the mountain of the Lord?
In a sense the centurion’s destiny which Jesus foretells
here – of feasting with Abraham, Issac and Jacob in the eternal kingdom –
cannot be understood except in the light of the first reading today in which
Isaiah prophesies that
the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established
as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up among the hills; and
all the nations shall flow to it, and many people shall come and say: “Come,
let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob.
In all humility, we must recognise that if we have faith, then
this too is our mountain, the dwelling place of our Father and, therefore, of
His children. If humility teaches us to be lowly, it is in the nature of this
mountain of faith – the mountain of the kingdom - to place us among the
heights, to give us glimpses of things that no lowland dweller can see. Here,
we walk in the light of the Lord, like climbers above the clouds, thrilled by visions
that we never expected and could not have imagined. While humility teaches us
to let go of our human measures, faith teaches us to drink deep of the divine
measures, as Isaiah says
that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his
paths.
From the faith of the centurion then, we can reach out in our prayer and perhaps catch a glimpse of the vision that inspired the military poet John Gillespie Magee who stepped on heights
Where never lark, or even eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
