Lenten Daily Gospel Reflection - 26 February 2013
After two days Jesus left for Galilee. (Jesus himself had testified that prophets have no honor in their own country.) When he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him because they had seen all the things he had done in Jerusalem during the festival, for they also had been at the festival.
He returned to Cana in Galilee where he had turned the water into wine. In Capernaum there was a certain royal official whose son was sick. When he heard that Jesus was coming from Judea to Galilee, he went out to meet him and asked Jesus if he would come and heal his son, for his son was about to die. Jesus said to him, “Unless you see miraculous signs and wonders, you won’t believe.”
The royal official said to him, “Lord, come before my son dies.”
Jesus replied, “Go home. Your son lives.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and set out for his home.
While he was on his way, his servants were already coming to meet him. They said, “Your son lives!” So he asked them at what time his son had started to get better. And they said, “The fever left him yesterday at about one o’clock in the afternoon.” Then the father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son lives.” And he and his entire household believed in Jesus. This was the second miraculous sign Jesus did while going from Judea to Galilee.
I think this can be read in a different way. When Jesus said, “Unless you see miraculous signs and wonders, you won’t believe,” a lot of us see this as a slight to the official (and, indeed, that might have been the intention).
But what if we see this as something deeper?
What if Jesus was actually saying that people aren’t able to believe until their “felt needs” are met? As Mahatma Gandhi said, “There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”
Perhaps the pangs of the official’s hunger were growing stronger with each passing moment as he watched death stealing life from his son. He couldn’t see G_d except in the form of his son. If his son died, he knew that the hole it would leave in his heart and life would never be filled (not in this world’s realm, anyway).
The official ran to meet Jesus. Once he found him, he fell to his knees and begged for just a morsel, a crumb, of hope. Jesus gave him a seed of life - “Your son lives.” He took the seed Jesus gave him and carried it home with the full intention that his hunger would be satisfied.
And “while he was on his way,” his servants rushed to meet him with the news that the seed had taken root, grown, was harvested, ground down, made into dough, and baked to a golden brown. And it was waiting for him. Because his hunger was satisfied, “he and his entire household believed in Jesus.”
Yeah. I think that can be seen here.
~~~
In the Love of the Three in One,
Br. Jack+, LC
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