Saturday of the Twelfth Week
It’s hard not to be sympathetic with Sarah’s incredulity in today’s reading. Abraham meets a few men by a tree and one of them tells the aged Sarah that she will bear a child by the next year. Now, we have to remember that Abraham already knows that the Lord made this promise as part of the covenant between them storied in Genesis 17. Obviously, he hasn’t talked this over with his wife! When one of the men predicts that Sarah will have a son, Abraham clearly recognizes the Lord in the men. Therefore, his hospitality, performed before he knew it was the Lord, is all the more remarkable. [As a side note, many throughout the history of the Church have seen a type (or image) of the Trinity in the three angels; Andrei Rublev’s (c. 1365– c. 1427) icon is a famous example. You can see a representation of it here: http://www.olgachristine.com/ikons/trinity.JPG.]
Sarah laughs at this news (Gen 8:12), as did Abraham when God first told him that they would have a son (Gen 7:17). In fact, their son will be named Isaac, which means “to laugh.” At this moment she laughs out of shock, disbelief, but perhaps also out of reserved joy—the Lord promises to give her the child she’s never been able to have! Eventually, Sarah proves herself to be a faithful matriarch of the Jewish people and servant of God, who is joyfully bemused by her son’s birth (see Gen 21:6). There are echoes in Sarah of the Magnificat that Mary proclaims when she visits her cousin Elizabeth (Lk 1:46-55)—both share a joyous faith in God’s saving work.
It is that same type of joyous faith that Jesus calls us to in the gospels. The story today from Matthew’s gospel challenges our expectations about where we might expect that faith to come from. A centurion is a Roman soldier and, as we know, the Romans were holding the Jews under military oppression during Jesus’ time. So a centurion would be that last person that a Jew would expect to understand and exhibit faith and trust in the Messiah. Nevertheless, in today’s gospel reading it is the Roman, the Gentile, who shows the faith and trust in Jesus. He knows that he is a sinner and unworthy of Jesus’ presence in his house [another side note: these are the very words that we repeat before receiving the Eucharist – “Lord I am not worthy to receive you…”] but he also knows that Jesus can heal his servant by the power of His word. This time it is Jesus who is shocked and “amazed” (Mt 8:10). He takes the occasion to explain that he came not only for Jews, but for everyone. In this, he fulfills and pushes even beyond the Jewish expectations of His mission.
Let us try today in a special way to exhibit the depths of our faith through outward joy.
- Tim Gabrielli