Your Priest's Message
My Dear Family in the Lord,
I embrace you and your families in the name of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, One God. I pray that y’all have a wonderful Summer and that you will be able to achieve all your plans, dreams, and projects in this wonderful time of the year.
This Sunday's Gospel brings to us a very unique story, a centurion, who was an officer in the Roman Army, a man in charge of 100 soldiers, more likely, a commander of a company in today’s modern army, this centurion, comes to Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior, with a very unusual request, saying: “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, in terrible distress." Without hesitation, the Lord told him: “I will come and heal him.” But the centurion answered Him: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes, and to another, 'Come,' and he comes, and to my slave, 'Do this,' and he does it.” (Matthew 5:8-9) And Jesus answered him: “Truly, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth." And to the centurion, Jesus said, "Go; be it done for you as you have believed." And the servant was healed at that very moment.” (Matthew 5:10-13)
I mentioned in the beginning that this Gospel Lesson, emphasizes a very “strange” unusual situation, because, it was almost unheard, out of any common practice, that one of the dignitaries who were contemporaries with The Lord, living in a society where 80% of the people were slaves, where, technically, these people had no rights, whatsoever, to find a man, like the centurion, who was concerned about the health and wellbeing of his slave. Most of the slaves, when they were incapable of performing any job because they suffered from different diseases, were left to die, without having the right to receive any medical assistance. Yet, this centurion showed his slave and proved to the Lord, that he cared about his servant/slave and that he looked around to find treatment for him. And He found the Best Physician and Healer in the world, Our Lord Jesus Christ.
The second aspect that we learn from this Biblical Text is that the centurion had great faith; he asked the Lord only to say the word, and he (the centurion) believed that just by the power of Jesus’ word, his servant would be made well! And that happened right away!
You may also wonder why the centurion did not invite Jesus into his house to have Him heal his servant there? Because he (the centurion) felt unworthy, because he was humble, and didn’t want to “trouble the Master, too much” and the centurion also knew, that he doesn’t have the same faith (Judaism) like Jesus and felt that a pagan like him, doesn’t deserve The Lord’s attention! And, obviously, he was wrong!
My Dear Family in the Lord,
These are pretty much all the things/teachings that I wanted to share from this Gospel Lesson. I wish you a wonderful Summer, and I pray and cannot wait to see ‘y’all in Church.
With all my love in Jesus Christ, I remain, prayerfully yours, His humble servant,
+Fr. Catalin