Mt 8.5-11 – Monday of the First Week of Advent
There is a phrase from the centurion in today’s Gospel that shocks even Jesus: “Lord, I am not worthy of you coming under my roof, but just say the word and my servant will be healed”.
It is surprising because this man is not a believer, he is not an Israelite, he does not belong to the people of the Covenant. Yet he believes more than many people thinkI’m religiously okay. Sometimes those “inside” are further away than those “outside”. The centurion understands one fundamental thing: It is not we who deserve God, it is God who comes by grace.
Humility is not self-loathing, but recognizing that we need someone greater than our pain, greater than our limitation. This humble gaze opens the door to miracles. Jesus marvels at him and it is beautiful to think that we can amaze God not with our titles or our spiritual performances, but with our trust. “I myself am under authority, and I say to someone ‘go’ and he goes…”. It’s as if he were saying: I know the power of the word, I know that when you speak things happen. And Jesus recognizes in that phrase a pure, incarnate, concrete faith.
We often ask God for proof, signs, guarantees. The centurion, on the other hand, is certain of God’s faithfulness even before seeing the result. And this turns everything upside down: faith is not expecting God to give us what we want, but trust that He is already at work within our history. “Many will come from the east and the west and will sit at table in the Kingdom”, the heart and action of God are greater than borders, even religious ones, and sometimes there is more faith where you would not expect to find anything, instead of those places where you believe there should be a lot of it and instead there is nothing.
