The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today remind us of the ancient vision of a world of where shalom is experienced by all people.
Train for war no more
The reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah envisions the future house of God.
* [2:4] Once the nations acknowledge God as sovereign, they go up to Jerusalem to settle their disputes, rather than having recourse to war.1
Psalm 122 is a song of Praise and Prayer for Jerusalem.
* [Psalm 122] A song of Zion, sung by pilgrims obeying the law to visit Jerusalem three times on a journey. The singer anticipates joining the procession into the city (Ps 122:1–3). Jerusalem is a place of encounter, where the people praise God (Ps 122:4) and hear the divine justice mediated by the king (Ps 122:5). The very buildings bespeak God’s power (cf. Ps 48:13–15). May the grace of this place transform the people’s lives (Ps 122:6–9)!2
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus Heals a Centurion’s Servant.
* [8:5–13] This story comes from Q (see Lk 7:1–10) and is also reflected in Jn 4:46–54. The similarity between the Q story and the Johannine is due to a common oral tradition, not to a common literary source. As in the later story of the daughter of the Canaanite woman (Mt 15:21–28) Jesus here breaks with his usual procedure of ministering only to Israelites and anticipates the mission to the Gentiles.3
Tamora Whitney comments that in Isaiah we hear about how great it will be in the days to come, when “The mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills.” In those days “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.”
Jesus appreciates the man’s faith. He says, “Amen, I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.” He should have found such faith in Israel. That is where the people would profess to have the most faith, but the strongest faith found was in a man of violence – a soldier – a centurion – an outsider. In Isaiah we look ahead to the glorious times when men will no longer train for war, but before those times come, it is a man of war who professes the strongest faith in the Lord, and who has the most devotion to His authority.4
Don Schwager quotes “Welcoming the Lord Jesus with expectant faith and humility,” by Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 A.D.
"When the Lord promised to go to the centurion's house to heal his servant, the centurion answered, 'Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed.' By viewing himself as unworthy, he showed himself worthy for Christ to come not merely into his house but also into his heart. He would not have said this with such great faith and humility if he had not already welcomed in his heart the One who came into his house. It would have been no great joy for the Lord Jesus to enter into his house and not to enter his heart. For the Master of humility both by word and example sat down also in the house of a certain proud Pharisee, Simon, and though he sat down in his house, there was no place in his heart. For in his heart the Son of Man could not lay his head" (Matthew 8:20). (excerpt from SERMON 62.1)5
The Word Among Us Meditation on Isaiah 2:1-5 comments that when he returns to fully establish his kingdom, Jesus will not only end all wars. He will heal all of the wounds of war. Soldiers and civilians alike, everyone who has suffered from violence of any kind, will be mended by his healing love. In fact, we see a sign of that healing love in today’s Gospel. There, a Roman centurion, a seasoned warrior, encounters Jesus. With just a few words, Jesus cures his servant’s suffering—an act that the centurion could never accomplish with his sword.
So as we long for the day when Isaiah’s prophecy comes to pass fully, let’s pray for peace. Let’s pray for every person touched by hatred or division or war, that they will know the healing love of Jesus. And this Advent, let’s embrace Jesus, the Prince of Peace, in our hearts. “Lord, bring the peace of your kingdom to every corner of the earth!”6
Friar Jude Winkler connects the work of Isaiah and Micah to the expectation that moral conduct would establish our Covenant with Nature and bring about the end of weapons. Hebrew and Christian authors brought contemporary literature into the Scriptures. Friar Jude notes the respect of the Centurion for Jesus' culture and traditions.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, comments that our DNA is divine, and the divine indwelling is never earned by any behavior, group membership, or ritual whatsoever, but only recognized and realized (see Romans 11:6; Ephesians 2:8–10) and thus fallen in love with. When we are ready, we will be both underwhelmed and overwhelmed at the boundless mystery of our own humanity. We will know we are standing under the same waterfall of mercy as everybody else and receiving an undeserved radical grace, which is the root cause of every ensouled being.
I am convinced that so much guilt, negative self-image, self-hatred, and self-preoccupation occurs because we have taken our cues and identity from a competitive and comparing world. But Jesus told us to never take this world as normative. Jesus asks, “Why do you look to one another for approval instead of the approval that comes from the one God?” (John 5:44). So many of us accept either a successful or a low self-image inside of a system of false images to begin with! (Smart, good looking, classy, loser—are all just words humans create). This will never work. We must find our true self “hidden within Christ in God,” as Paul says in Colossians 3:3. Or, as Teresa of Ávila envisioned God telling her, “If you wish to find Me / In yourself seek Me. [2] Then we do not go up and down, but we are built on the Rock of Ages. It is the very shape of all spiritual maturity, regardless of what religion we may belong to.7
Conflicts among people rooted in political and cultural differences are healed by the Spirit in our striving for peace.
References
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