Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Gospel of John, chapter 4:50

Trust is a beautiful thing. It is a commitment of the heart to another person; a deep-seated confidence that the one, who is the object of your trust, will not let you down. When two people get married in church, they can pledge their trust to each other, in sickness and in death, while their trust is anchored in a trusting relationship with Christ. That is why Christian marriage is called a sacrament; it represents the relationship of trust between Christ and His people, the church.

In today’s gospel story, John 4:43-54, a royal official in Capernaum, Galilee, asks Jesus to cure his son who was ill. Jesus had just left his own town of Nazareth, where he was rejected and almost killed. It was in Nazareth that Jesus said: “no prophet is accepted in his hometown.” (Luke 4:24).

Galilee, however, was different; and the people of Galilee- Jews and gentiles alike, received Jesus with trust. The royal official, in today’s gospel story, was likely a gentile, but there was no doubt about his trust in Jesus. When Jesus told him, “your son will live,” the man took Jesus at his word, “and started for home.” When his servants informed him his son was cured, he did not leave it at that. He asked them “what time” did the boy show “improvement?” When they told him the time, the official realized it was “at that very hour” that Jesus told him: “your son is going to live.”

The official’s trust, recounted in this gospel story, was so beautiful that Jesus cured the man’s son at a distance. Jesus could not perform any miracles in Nazareth, his hometown, because of lack of trust. It was in Galilee that Jesus performed His first miracle when he changed the water into wine; and it was in Galilee that Jesus cured the royal official’s son.

Trust is faith from the heart or heart-felt faith. Cardinal Newman distinguished a notional faith from a real faith. A notional faith is faith as doctrine or belief; the kind of faith we proclaim in church when we recite the profession of faith. Faith as trust, however, is what Newman calls a real faith because it is from the heart and involves a relationship of trust with the Lord.

The official in today’s Gospel had a heart-felt faith for “he put his trust in the word Jesus spoke to him,” and his faith was rewarded.

Fr. Hugh Duffy