The centerpiece of the Gospel reading today is the story of the healing of the centurion’s servant. It is a marvelous story of Jesus healing by his Word, in response to the faith of the centurion.
What intrigues me most about the story is that Jesus was evidently ready to drop everything and go to the centurion’s house to heal his servant. He was talked out of it, but he was willing to go. Why?
Surely, he wasn’t a friend to the Roman soldiers. They were troops occupying his homeland. He certainly wasn’t keeping company with Gentiles, and this man was a Gentile. Was Jesus impressed that he had crossed boundaries to ask for help? Did it touch him that the centurion was asking not for himself or a family member, but for someone lowly—a servant? Was Jesus’ compassion awakened by hearing that the paralyzed servant was “suffering greatly”?
We’ll never know what went through his mind at that moment. But I like to think that Jesus also saw something in the centurion’s heart that unlocked his response. Did the sincerity of the centurion’s hope show in his face even before he made his plea or confessed his faith?
We borrow this Roman soldier’s own words in the Mass before we receive communion. There we stand, in the presence of the only one who can really help us. But what is in our heart? Does the Lord see something in our very faces that would make him drop everything and come?
