The faith of the centurion

Monday,
September 16, 2019
24th Week in Ordinary Time
First Reading:
1 Tim 2: 1-8
Gospel Reading: Luke 7:1-10
When he had fi-nished all his words to the people, he entered Capernaum. A centurion there had a slave who was ill and about to die, and he was valuable to him. When he heard about Jesus, he sent elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and save the life of his slave. They approached Jesus and strongly urged him to come, saying, “He deserves to have you do this for him, for he loves our nation and he built the synagogue for us.”
And Jesus went with them, but when he was only a short distance from the house, the centurion sent friends to tell him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof. Therefore, I did not consider myself worthy to come to you; but say the word and let my servant be healed. For I too am a person subject to authority, with soldiers subject to me. And 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.”
When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him and, turning, said to the crowd following him, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” When the messengers returned to the house, they found the slave in good health.
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
There are as many motives in believing as there are believers. What was the motive of the Centurion in putting so much faith in Jesus? Was it the prospect of an instant cure for his dying slave? “Everyone believes very easily whatever he desires”, wrote Jean dela Fontaine in ‘Fables’. Was it because he so desired a powerful healer in Jesus that the centurion readily believed in him?
From the feedbacks of those who knew him, it seems he was really a good man. Otherwise why was he worried about losing a sick and dying servant at a time when anybody could just buy another slave to replace a dying one. From this ‘good nature’ the grace of that encounter with Jesus blossomed into genuine faith. The Catholic Church believes that grace builds on nature. Even the academe as far back as the glorious days of Spain’s Salamanca University recognized something to this effect with its famous maxim “Quod natura non dat, Salamantica non praestat” (What nature does not give, Salamanca does not produce).
There are many motives of believing, as there are followers of Christ. Nobody can accuse the centurion of believing for the sake of convenience. His ‘good nature’ rules out this possibility. Do you have the ‘good nature’ to establish the authenticity of your faith? – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.