Third Sunday after Epiphany
Today’s Gospel passage ends with Our Lord saying to the Roman centurion: Go and let it be done to thee as thou hast believed. It is the faith of this pagan soldier that is rewarded, faith which stunned Our Blessed Lord: Not in all of Israel had He found such. Not in all Israel! So often we find faith where we would not have expected. We discover a soul that truly believes that a single word from the mouth of God is enough to change a life forever.
The leper in today’s Gospel also experienced the omnipotence of the Divine Will. His prayer is simple, it is pure, it requires no more than that God know its plight. Lord, if Thou dost will it, Thou canst make me clean. If Thou dost but will it! Leprosy in Holy Scripture is the symbol of sin, which disfigures the soul, eats away at its substance, and ends by taking its life and leading it to eternal damnation. But the will of God can change that. If we but had the faith of the leper, the faith of the centurion, how our lives would change. No situation of sin is ever inevitable. It is never an insoluble problem. It would be, if we were to rely on our own strength, for the soul in sin is dead to grace and cannot help itself. But if we come humbly to the Lord in prayer, His omnipotent Word can change all things in an instant, for God does not need time. It is not true that one needs time to leave sin behind. It is not true that one gradually leaves Satan and goes to God. One always has the grace to resist temptation, on the single condition that one prays.
A French priest of the 19th century expressed in these words the need for prayer and its omnipotence: “Believe me, my dear Friends; believe an experience ripened by thirty years in the Sacred Ministry. I affirm that all deceptions, all spiritual deficiencies, all miseries, all falls, all faults and even the most serious wanderings out of the right path — all proceed from this single source: a lack of constancy in prayer. Live the life of prayer; learn to bring everything, to change everything into prayer: pains and trials, and temptations of all kinds. Pray in the calm; pray in the storm; pray on waking and pray during the daytime. Going and coming, pray! Tired out and distracted, pray! Whatever repugnance you may have, pray! Pray, that you may learn to pray. Teach us, O Lord, how to pray (Luke 11:1). ‘But I cannot pray!’ That is a heresy. Yes, you can always pray. If you feel a disgust for, nay, a horror of prayer, pray on, pray in spite of yourself, against yourself. Beg for the courage in prayer that our agonising Saviour merited for you by His pangs in Gethsemane and upon Calvary. Pray, for prayer is the strength that saves, the courage that perseveres, the spiritual bridge cast over the abyss that joins the soul to God” (Fr Gustave Xavier de Ravignan).
Once we have individual men and women who are really serious about the interior life, then we have a strong Christian community, built on fervent prayer and self-denial. Then, by its very nature, such a community seeks to expand. Catholicism is by its very nature missionary. Many will come from the East and the West, says Our Lord in today’s Gospel. They will come, but they need us to bear witness to the truth for them. Our Blessed Lord made the apostles fishers of men, but as every fisherman knows, fish do not usually jump into the boat! You have to go get them. There are many fish out there, many souls full of leprosy, many souls spiritually dead and on the verge of damnation. We must bring them to Our Blessed Lord. A true Catholic cannot allow himself to live in a spiritual ghetto, where he has all he needs for his soul, but no concern for those of others. No, the true Catholic knows he is responsible for the salvation of souls.
That is why, in today’s epistle, St Paul puts the faithful on their guard against a possible deviation in every community: that of internal strife and fighting, for such, in addition to offending the Sacred Heart of Our Lord, paralyse the missionary thrust. Be of one mind one towards another. Be humble. Be not conceited. Render no man evil for evil. As much as is in you, have peace with all men. Revenge not yourselves. Be not overcome by evil: but overcome evil by good (cf. Rm 12). Following this teaching of the apostle, St Ignatius gives this sound advice: “Every good Christian should more ready to put a good interpretation on another’s statement than to condemn it as false. If an orthodox construction cannot be put on a proposition, the one who made it should be asked how he understands it. If he is in error, he should be corrected with all kindness. If this does not suffice, all appropriate means should be used to bring him to a correct interpretation, and so defend the proposition from error.” How many misunderstandings, how many sins, how much strife would be avoided if we took this advice to heart!
Did not Our Blessed Lord give us the sign at which true disciples are known: In this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (Jn 13:35). That is the sign, the only sign, one upon which we must often meditate. That is why St Benedict tells his monks to “honour all men” and welcome all guests as if they were Christ Himself. All are in need of Christ, and we must do everything we possibly can to bring Him to them.
To achieve this, let us turn to the example and teaching of St Paul, whose conversion is commemorated this day. He inspires us with the desire to help all men come to the knowledge of Christ and His Church as he did, and once they have done so, to remain firm in the truth, conscious of the temptation to lassitude and change which can only lead to apostasy and death. This morning at Matins, we heard him tell the Galatians, and through them, each of us: I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ (Gal 1:6-10).
May Mary Help of Christians, patroness of Australia, whose existence as a nation we will rightly celebrate tomorrow, intercede for us and help us to radiate the Face of Christ to all. May she light a fire of divine love in our hearts so that the entire country may be set ablaze, not with the fire that destroys, but the fire of love that purifies, heals, saves, lifts up to heavenly things, and leads to eternal life. Amen.
