Week 4 Pentecost.
Healing of the centurion’s servant
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
So often you hear from people: I pray, I aspire to God, I crave to meet with Him – and at the same time, He seems to remain far away to me, I don’t have a living feeling of His closeness …
Today’s gospel does not condemn such an attitude, but it should open our heart to something else. The man, the centurion had a painful need: his servant was dying, lying in sickness. And he turned to Christ for help.
Christ answered him: I will come to you … And what did the centurion say to him? – Not! Do not come! I am not worthy for You to come under my shelter – one of Your words, said here, is enough to return health and life to my servant …
And Christ set him as an example to other people: he set as an example this marvelous faith, which allowed him to say: do not come, I am not worthy – I have enough of your word. How often do we ask ourselves the question: how to live? what to do?
If only the Lord, the Savior, Christ stood before me, if only He told me now: Do this, do otherwise … – I would do it; but He is silent … Is this true? No, it’s not true!
He left us His word in the holy Gospel; it says everything that is needed in order for our life to become different, for it to be transformed, for everything in it to become new, for our ways to become the ways of God.
But we are waiting for another revelation, a personal one: it is said to all, it is said for all ages, and I want a personal a word that would solve my task now, by a miracle …
And we don’t hear that word – because it sounds on every page of the Gospel, but we don’t go there: I read the Gospel a long time ago, I know the Gospel; it would be a new word for me, the Lord would come …
How could we live, what could we learn, if, like this centurion, we could say: a new revelation, I am not worth the direct impact; I have enough of the word of God – life-giving, revealing new ways … And then everything would be.
Therefore, we will learn, like Peter, when he saw a wonderful fish catch, say: Lord! Get out of my boat! I am not worthy of You to be with me! .. – or as a centurion: No! Your word is enough …
We will learn this obedience, this faith and this humility, and then everything will be revealed before us, and God will become for us Alive and near and miraculous.
Amen.
July 4, 1982
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