Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully.
We can see the servant as representing the soul of the entire human race, meant to live entirely motivated by love, but unable to consistently achieve this. Our movement was meant to be directed by desire for the true good. But our willingness to substitute lesser things for that good became habitual, making approaching it increasingly difficult. We suffered dreadfully because of this double mindedness by which we claimed to desire what was best but often actually chose something much less.
He said to him, "I will come and cure him."
Advent should represent our preparation for the fact that Jesus looked at the human race and said what he now spoke to the centurion. Somehow the one who was perfect and entirely good, all light and no darkness, chose to descend to our realm of sin and shadow in order to save us and set us free. To this we tend to think, 'Well, of course'. But is it really so obvious? He stood to gain nothing, and in fact would not accomplish his mission without much suffering on his part. He was already perfectly fulfilled and content living in a perfect communion of love with the Father and the Spirit. And yet he stepped down to earth and pitched his tent among us. He was driven to do so by a love that is was so utterly unfathomable that dismissing it as a matter of course was the way most people seemed to come to terms with it.
Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof;
only say the word and my servant will be healed.
Thank God for this centurion who did not take the unmerited love of Jesus for granted and gave us words to remember and to use so that we could approximate his response. Thank God for the centurion's faith by which we remember that Jesus could simply have said the word. He could have spoken and restarted creation when we chose against him in the first place. He could have spoken and changed us from the outside in, forcing his will upon us. But rather than doing either of these he chose to come, to be one of us, and to win us over by his display of excessively extravagant love.
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.
O house of Jacob, come,
let us walk in the light of the LORD!
God desired that what he promised through Isaiah be accomplished through Jesus and his Church. This was that the world would be instructed in truth and learn to walk in the paths of peace. He wanted to establish his holy mountain so that nations could recognize its goodness and stream toward it freely, beginning to internalize his vision for us as our own, and to desire for ourselves what he first desired for us.
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