Week 24 Monday (Year 1)

Readings: 1 Timothy 2:1-8; Psalm 28; Luke 7:1-10

The first reading contains a well-known sentence, that 'God wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth'. This ancient teaching of Judaism is definitively confirmed by the teaching and work of Jesus. The original promise to Abraham called him out to be the father of a particular people, but a people through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed.

This universal character of God's call is spoken of again and again through the scriptures. It is spoken of particularly in the prophets. And it is spoken of even more particularly in the prophets teaching at the time of the Exile. At that time, when the chosen people had lost everything on which they had previously relied to confirm their special status as God's people, the prophets recalled them to the original purpose of Israel's election: so that all the nations of the earth might be blessed, might share the blessings of the covenant, might gather at Mount Zion to worship all together the God of Israel.

We see this blessing actually being fulfilled in the gospel reading today. A centurion, and so a foreigner and not one of the chosen people, sends a request for help to Jesus who responds immediately and sets out for the centurion's house. It brings out not only the reach of Jesus' work beyond the boundaries of Israel but the fact that people can access his saving work even from a distance. There are other places in the gospels where proximity and presence are important factors for Jesus' work but here it is the opposite. He never actually meets the centurion. He hears his initial request from messengers and he hears his advice not to come to his house in the same way.

It is worth thinking about what the implications of this distance might mean. A human being in distress sends a message asking Jesus for help. He has no visible connection with Jesus. He is not part of the discipleship that has grown up around Jesus. He is not a Jew. Jesus nevertheless responds to his request. A second message arrives dissuading Jesus from coming to the centurion's house. When Jesus hears the reason the centurion gives as to why he should not enter his house, he expresses admiration for his faith. Not even in Israel, he says, (where one would expect to find it), has he found faith comparable to that of the centurion.

So the link is faith, this is the connection between Jesus and the centurion. It is a connection that can be established even through the ministry of others. Faith is the key which opens the door, the reality to which Jesus responds so readily. And in this way the will of God as expressed in the first reading - that everyone should be saved and come to knowledge of the truth - is fulfilled. It is fulfilled in the slave who is healed. It is fulfilled in the centurion whose faith has opened the door for this healing. We can imagine that it is fulfilled also in others in the centurion's family and circle, seeing what has happened.

Nobody is excluded from this connection since God's will is that everyone should be saved and come to knowledge of the truth. No human need or distress falls outside the reach of God's compassion. So let us pray for this gift of faith. If lack of faith or weakness of faith is the need about which we need to ask help, then so be it. It was another outsider in the gospels who gave us this prayer: 'Lord I believe, help my unbelief'.