Monday, First Week of Advent

There was great joy at Dublin Airport last week when soldiers returned from many months of duty in Lebanon. Their families had been worried sick about them because of the dangerous situation in which they found themselves. Yet, soldiers will do what their commanding officers ask of them, even if it means staying put in a combat zone. In today’s gospel reading, there is an interaction between Jesus and a soldier, an officer in the Roman army who had charge of one hundred men, a centurion. This man was very aware of the power of his own word when addressed to his soldiers. ‘I say to one, “Go”, and he goes; and to another, “Come here”, and he comes’. The centurion concluded that if his word is powerful, the word of Jesus must be much more powerful, powerful enough to heal his servant at a distance, so that Jesus, a Jew, would not have to enter the home of a pagan centurion. The centurion displayed a deep faith in the healing power of Jesus’ word. According to the gospel reading, Jesus was ‘amazed’ at this pagan’s faith, saying, ‘In no one in Israel have I found such faith’. Not only was Jesus amazed at this man’s faith, but the church was amazed at it too, because a version of his words has made its way into the text of the Mass. His words become our words as we prepare to receive the Lord in Holy Communion. The deepest faith can be found in the most unexpected of people, including among those who are outsiders to the community of faith, as the centurion was in Jesus’ time and place. As Jesus says in John’s gospel, ‘the Spirit/wind blows where it chooses’. The gospel reading invites us to be amazed, as Jesus was, at the unexpected ways that the Spirit moves in the lives of others.