How Jesus Challenges Our Faith to Grow, Fourth Monday of Lent, March 15, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent
March 15, 2021
Is 65:17-21, Ps 30, Jn 4:43-54

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• As we continue in this second phase of Lent, focused on the catechumen/elect’s preparation for baptism and all the faithful’s renewal of baptismal promises, today we focus on the journey of faith toward the reality promised. In today’s first reading, we encounter the prelude to yesterday’s Laetare Sunday. The Church on the Fourth Sunday of Lent begins the Liturgy with God’s message, “Laetare, Ierusalem!,” found in the 66th chapter of the Prophet Isaiah. Today we read from what immediately preceded that holy imperative in the 65th chapter, God’s promise to the Jews in Babylonian exile, the promise that would make them rejoice: that he was going to make a new heaven and a new earth that would be full of joy. Similarly, through baptism and its renewal by grace, God wants to recreate us, to renew us, to give us a totally new start. The prayers of today’s Mass are all about this renewal. We started Mass praying, “O God, who renew the world through mysteries beyond all telling.” When we offer the gifts to God, we’ll ask him to receive them and grant us the grace to “be cleansed from old earthly ways and renewed by growth in heavenly life.” After Communion, we’ll pray that the gift of the Mass will “give us life by making us new, and by sanctifying us, lead us to things eternal.” The whole purpose of the Lenten season from God’s perspective is to make us new — a source of great joy! — and the whole purpose of the Lenten season from our perspective ought to be to cooperate in that renewal. The renewal God wants to give us is a renewal in faith, to help our faith grow. He assists to grow in faith, to journey with him more and more deeply into the life of faith, as we see with the royal official in today’s Gospel, and through him all the members of his household.
• This royal official, as soon as he heard that Jesus had returned to Galilee, went out to meet him. The distance between Capernaum and Cana is 20 miles and the father, out of love for his son, walked it in search of Jesus. It was quite humbling what the dad did, not only journeying that distance but desperately placing his trust in a Jewish carpenter, something that for a royal official likely could have brought him derision and possibly have been a terrible career move. He journeyed out of desperate hope, but Jesus was going to avail of the situation not only to heal the man’s son but to bring him and his family to faith. Jesus was going to test this man in a similar way to how he helped the Syro-Phoenician mother, whose daughter was possessed by a demon, grow in faith in Tyre. The royal official asked him “to come down and heal his son,” to make the long journey with him and touch his son to cure him like he had heard Jesus had done to many others in Capernaum and elsewhere. But Jesus responded, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.” Seeing would be believing for him. Much like Elisha did for Naaman in the passage we read a week ago, smashing his expectations over how a miracle would work and trying to control it as much as possible rather than walk by faith, so Jesus was doing the same thing here for the Royal Official, who, like Naaman, probably believed he would come, say some prayers over the son, and touch him. Jesus wanted the challenge the man to greater truth and faith. Jesus would say after the resurrection to doubting Thomas, “You have believed because you have seen me. Blessed are those who have not seen but believed.” Jesus wanted to bring this man to real faith, faith not only in Jesus as a person but faith in what he said. The royal official wasn’t interested in the larger points about seeing and believing but was impatient for the cure of his son. He pleaded with Jesus, “Sir, come down before my son dies!” That’s when Jesus said to him, “You may go. Your son will live.” It was a supreme test of faith, whether he would believe in Jesus enough to believe in his word. It would have been tempting to think Jesus may have been blowing him off, that he didn’t want to be bothered with the journey, or other doubts and distractions. But as St. John tells us, “The man believed what Jesus said to him and left.” And we know that along the at least seven hour journey back, he was intercepted by his servants who told him that his son had gotten better. He could have simply rejoiced as if it were a coincidence, but he asked at what time he was cured, to verify what his faith had told him, and he was told at the very hour when Jesus had told him that his son would live. He knew that it was more than Jesus’ “seeing” that his Son would be cured, either; he knew by faith that Jesus’ words “your son will live” that brought about the healing. St. John concludes by saying, “He and his whole household came to believe.” He helped his family grow to faith that it was precisely Jesus’ healing word that worked the miracle.
• (I would say as an important aside that many people conflate this miracle with the healing of the Centurion’s servant at a distance (Mt 8:5-13; Lk 7:1-10), which we get each year on the first Monday of Advent and the 24th Monday in Ordinary Time, but there are too many divergent elements. Both the royal official and the Centurion were from Capernaum, but with the royal official’s son the miracle took place in Cana, with the Centurion’s servant it happened in Capernaum itself; Jesus challenged the royal official’s faith; he praised the Centurion’s for being greater than all the faith he had found in Israel; the royal official begged Jesus to come to his home; the Centurion said he wasn’t worthy to receive Jesus under his roof; the royal official was likely Jewish; the Centurion was definitely pagan. Not only were the men different, but the lessons Jesus drew were different. Regardless, both point us to the faith that precedes and is meant to flow from baptism).
• The Lord Jesus wants us to help us to grow in a similar responsiveness as we see in the royal official, to walk by his word in faith, to trust in his word, to journey according to his promises. He shows us how to look at the promises of God, how to go forward toward this promises believing in his word. He wants us likewise to see how much good can be done at a distance, in our praying for people, in our sending them help, like so many do, for example, for the missions. Today we come to Mass to meet the same Jesus the royal official met in Cana, and Jesus wants to do in us an even greater miracle than he did for this man’s son. We haven’t journeyed for 20 miles on foot — though one of you drove 35 miles, some of you may have bicycled down here 4.5 miles and the celebrant walked 3.5 miles! — but nevertheless we have all journeyed to get to this Church. Jesus wants to give himself to us on the inside so that we can begin to journey in communion with him all the way to the Father’s home, to the new heavens and the new earth, and to the joyful fulfillment of all his promises. And Jesus hopes that once Mass is done and we’ve been renewed in faith, we will go out to spread the faith so that so many others may join or journey more deeply into his household.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel
JN 4:43-54

At that time Jesus left [Samaria] for Galilee.
For Jesus himself testified
that a prophet has no honor in his native place.
When he came into Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him,
since they had seen all he had done in Jerusalem at the feast;
for they themselves had gone to the feast.

Then he returned to Cana in Galilee,
where he had made the water wine.
Now there was a royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum.
When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea,
he went to him and asked him to come down
and heal his son, who was near death.
Jesus said to him,
“Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”
The royal official said to him,
“Sir, come down before my child dies.”
Jesus said to him, “You may go; your son will live.”
The man believed what Jesus said to him and left.
While the man was on his way back,
his slaves met him and told him that his boy would live.
He asked them when he began to recover.
They told him,
“The fever left him yesterday, about one in the afternoon.”
The father realized that just at that time Jesus had said to him,
“Your son will live,”
and he and his whole household came to believe.
Now this was the second sign Jesus did
when he came to Galilee from Judea.

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