The centurion heard something about Jesus that gave him hope for his ailing slave. What precisely he heard and what he knew is not clear. But whatever it was, it moved him to a greater faith than many who were much nearer to Jesus.
When he heard about Jesus, he sent elders of the Jews to him,
asking him to come and save the life of his slave.
He sent the elders to Jesus because he did not himself feel deserving to go to him. He was like the man in the parable about prayer who "standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" (see Luke 18:13).
"He deserves to have you do this for him,
for he loves our nation and he built the synagogue for us."
His friends pleaded for him on his merits. But he himself didn't want Jesus to believe that he thought he was deserving because of these works he had done, however good they may have been. He sent more friends to correct the misconception, to insist on his unworthiness before Jesus. There must have been something in what he had heard about Jesus that made it clear to him that he was more than an ordinary teacher or healer. There was in Jesus an authority over reality itself in the same way that one soldier might have authority over others. As a soldier ought not to presume upon his superiors, how much less, this centurion must have reasoned, should he presume upon Jesus himself?
Lord, do not trouble yourself,
for I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof.
Therefore, I did not consider myself worthy to come to you;
One amazing aspect of this humility is that by the centurion, by not insisting on making himself the center of attention, by in fact removing himself as must as possible from the exchange, he freed Jesus to work in a powerful way.
When the messengers returned to the house,
they found the slave in good health.
Jesus did not need to enter the house of the centurion to heal his servant. And even though Jesus was on his way to the house, and some good would have no doubt come from his visit in addition to the healing, the way he healed him from where he was may well have been a greater benefit because of the way it confirmed the faith already growing in the centurion.
We tend to make ourselves the center of our interactions with Jesus, and assume that whether or not he hears our prayers has to do with how he finds the house of our hearts when he arrives. But it has much less to do with us and much more to what we believe him able to do, not because of us, because of who we are or what we have done, but because of who he himself is.
We are sometimes reluctant to embrace the humility of the centurion because we have a confused notion of humility, that is more like self-hatred, a program of negative thinking about ourselves. However, as the centurion demonstrated, it is much more like self-forgetfulness. Humility has the power to remove our liabilities and limitations as obstacles to the work of Jesus, while faith reaches out and attains what we need.
I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof ...
but say the word and let my servant be healed.
We echo the words of the centurion in every mass because we are not, could not ever be worthy of all that Jesus has done for us. But we should not be discouraged by this, as though he will some day realize it and stop giving us his grace and blessings. Instead we should grow increasing confident of all that he is able to do in us and through us even in spite of us. We should grow confident, too, that he wants to do all of this, much more than we ourselves feebly desire it.
Paul desired that people everywhere lift up supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings, not because he was convinced that God would eventually concede to the vast merit of a deserving crowd, but because he believed that God himself valued and desired that those requests be made, and desired himself to answer them. Therefore true humility will not cause us to neglect intercession as though are prayers are too small too matter. Rather we should realize that this "is good and pleasing to God our savior, who wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth".
Hear the sound of my pleading, when I cry to you,
lifting up my hands toward your holy shrine.
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