Amazing Trust

"Lord, I am not worthy that You should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed."

We say these words so often, we might not appreciate the great faith and humility they are intended to express as we are about to receive Jesus hidden in the Eucharist. We have no proof of His existence in the Blessed Sacrament, yet we believe in Jesus' Eucharistic power to heal and help us. The prayer, of course, is from Scripture, in the story of the centurion from Capernaum. Here's the account from Luke's Gospel:

"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."

Jesus was amazed at the centurion. How amazing it is to amaze God! The centurion could be a patron saint for our Year of Faith with his simple, but amazing, trust in Jesus.

This faith does not appear to have come suddenly to the centurion. The Jewish elders knew this Roman soldier's life of faith: "He deserves to have You do this for him, for he loves our nation and he built the synagogue for us."

And the centurion above all was humble. Great saints tell us that we need humility to grow in other virtues, like faith. We have to know who we are and Who God is; we are nothing before He Who is Everything. "I did not consider myself worthy to come to You," the centurion said in his message to Jesus.

As a soldier, the centurion knew about authority. He was subject to his commanders, and his soldiers were subject to him. He accepted the notion of human authority and believed in Jesus' authority over everything -- even illness and death. The centurion did not ask Jesus to go out of His way. He knew what our Lord was capable of. Jesus' word -- even from afar -- was enough.

And "when the messengers returned to the house, they found the slave in good health."

Please, Lord, grant us the confident trust of the centurion. Strengthen our faith in You!

Inspired by this Year of Faith we will be posting columns like this about exporing and/or deepening our faith. Watch for it on Thursdays.

Faith in the Midst of Drought

As we enter the Church's Year of Faith, we are in the midst of a drought.

Everything seems withered and parched, which is perhaps a good metaphor for where we are morally and spiritually. Our nation, our world, has lost Jesus, like Mary and Joseph did in Jerusalem.

Caryll Houselander -- a British mystic, poet and spiritual teacher who lived during World War II -- described in her writings how events in the Gospel are relived over and over in the lives of individuals and nations. She wrote about how everyone at some point experiences the loss of the child Jesus.

And "there is no emptiness like the emptiness of the house from which a child has gone away."

In the middle of the last century Houselander wrote: "gradually we have frittered our freedom away: always increasing our wants, little by little making more and more necessities for ourselves; forming habit after habit of petty indulgence; until one day (if we are given the grace of realising it), we discover that we too have lost the Divine Child."

How much truer that seems today.

Houselander wrote the following about World War II England, but she could have been describing the present-day United States as well:

"England, as a nation, is also going through the experience of the loss of the Divine Child.

"The Christ Child in a nation is like the presence of the child in a house: everything centres upon his youth; and he fills everything with his life. If he goes away, the child's values go, too, such as the sense of wonder, mystery, beauty, and adventure: the poetry which, free from materialism, is the most complete realism.

"In England, there are traces of where the Child onced lived: there are remnants of the Faith; but not the certainty of the Faith that there once was. There is a wistful longing to believe; but not the joyful freedom of living in belief.

"There is the desire to set up laws of justice for everyone's happiness; but not the spirit of the Child's obedience to God's Law in the heart of all men: and indeed without that no codes and laws can have value; because those who make them have not the capacity to keep them."

Houselander's advice: "seek, seek, seek" all your life for the lost Child.

He is the fulfillment of all our longing. He gives us the Living Water for which we thirst in this drought.

Inspired by this Year of Faith (which began a week ago today) we will be posting columns like this about exporing and/or deepening our faith. Watch for it on Thursdays.