When I read today’s Gospel, I was struck by the centurion’s response. At first, he only tells Jesus about his servant’s paralysis. He doesn’t ask for healing. Jesus is the one who offers to help saying, “I will come and cure him”. The centurion responds by almost rejecting the offer, but ultimately leaves the decision to Jesus: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant shall be healed”.
The profound thing about this is that the centurion did not necessarily expect a healing. What was he expecting? At least some kind of help from Jesus, I’m sure. But he didn’t seem particularly attached to the way it happened. He wanted to speak to Jesus about his paralyzed servant, and He wanted Jesus to decide what to do with that information.
It wasn’t so much a passive-aggressive helplessness, wanting Jesus to figure out his problem so he didn’t have to. It was more of an open-ended request for help. The centurion wanted Jesus to help with the servant, but he didn’t presume to demand a particular course of action from the Lord.
As the centurion said, he knew what it was like to have authority and to be able to effect his will with only his word: “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.” Jesus in turn recognized the centurion’s faith that He could heal the servant with only His command and praised him for it stating, “in no one in Israel have I found such faith.” This faith is so powerful because it recognizes that God can not only heal but can heal in whatever way He wills to do so.
This kind of faith also understands that God is able to determine what will be best for His creation. The centurion might have wanted Jesus to come and lay his hands on his servant, but he knew to whom he was speaking. He knew that the decision was best left up to Jesus, and he was willing to present his problem in that light. He was even willing to face the possibility that Jesus might have chosen to leave his servant paralyzed.
This deep faith is an example to us. It is good for us to ask the Lord for help, and it is better to present the Lord with our troubles and needs without attachment to a particular solution. We have our own ideas, and those are not necessarily bad, but the Lord’s are best, and He often acts in ways that we do not understand. As the centurion understood, the details are best left to God.
Daily Reading
Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
Reading 1 Zechariah 2:14-17 Sing and rejoice, O daughter Zion! See, I am coming to dwell among you, says the LORD. Many nations shall join themselves to the LORD on…
Saint of the Day
St. Juan Diego
St. Juan Diego
Feast date: Dec 09
On Dec. 9, Roman Catholics celebrate St. Juan Diego, the indigenous Mexican Catholic convert whose encounter with the Virgin Mary began the Church’s devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe.In 1474, 50 years before receiving the name Juan Diego at his baptism, a boy named Cuauhtlatoatzin — “singing eagle” — was born in the Anahuac Valley of present-day Mexico. Though raised according to the Aztec pagan religion and culture, he showed an unusual and mystical sense of life even before hearing the Gospel from Franciscan missionaries.In 1524, Cuauhtlatoatzin and his wife converted and entered the Catholic Church. The farmer now known as Juan Diego was committed to his faith, often walking long distances to receive religious instruction. In December of 1531, he would be the recipient of a world-changing miracle.On Dec. 9, Juan Diego was hurrying to Mass to celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. But the woman he was heading to church to celebrate came to him instead.In the native Aztec dialect, the radiant woman announced herself as the “ever-perfect holy Mary, who has the honor to be the mother of the true God.”“I am your compassionate Mother, yours and that of all the people that live together in this land,” she continued, “and also of all the other various lineages of men.”She asked Juan Diego to make a request of the local bishop. “I want very much that they build my sacred little house here” — a house dedicated to her son Jesus Christ, on the site of a former pagan temple, that would “show him” to all Mexicans and “exalt him” throughout the world.She was asking a great deal of a native farmer. Not surprisingly, his bold request met with skepticism from Bishop Juan de Zumárraga. But Juan Diego said he would produce proof of the apparition, after he finished tending to his uncle whose death seemed imminent.Making his way to church on Dec. 12, to summon a priest for his uncle, Juan Diego again encountered the Blessed Virgin. She promised to cure his uncle and give him a sign to display for the bishop. On the hill where they had first met he would find roses and other flowers, though it was winter.Doing as she asked, he found the flowers and brought them back to her. The Virgin Mary then placed the flowers inside his tilma, the traditional cloak-like garment he had been wearing. She told him not to unwrap the tilma containing the flowers until he had reached the bishop.When he did, Bishop Zumárraga had his own encounter with Our Lady of Guadalupe – through the image of her that he found miraculously imprinted on the flower-filled tilma. The Mexico City basilica that now houses the tilma has become, by some estimates, the world’s most-visited Catholic shrine.The miracle that brought the Gospel to millions of Mexicans also served to deepen Juan Diego’s own spiritual life. For many years after the experience, he lived a solitary life of prayer and work in a hermitage near the church where the image was first displayed. Pilgrims had already begun flocking to the site by the time he died on Dec. 9, 1548, the 17th anniversary of the first apparition.Blessed John Paul II beatified St. Juan Diego in 1990, and canonized him in 2002.