Matthew 8:5-13 / Luke 10:38-42, 11:27-28
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Dear Father, brothers and sisters: Spraznecom!
This Sunday marks the fourth Sunday after Pentecost and the first Sunday of what is popularly known in the west as “Ordinary Time” (Tempus per annum). Since the beginning of February this year through to the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost, just last week, we have been slowly working our way through two massive books of church hymnography, first, the Lenten Triodion (three-odes) so named after the canons of Matins which are unusually composed of just three odes. Through this book Holy Mother Church takes us by the hand to the start of Great Lent and then through the 40 days of the Fast and onto the momentous and Holy Days of Holy Week right up until the Midnight Office of Holy Pascha. Then in the victory-dawn of Pascha night and the triumphant chanting of Paschal Matins we enter the next book of hymnody, the Pentecostarion which takes us through the Light-filled weeks of Pascha, Ascensiontide and finally Pentecost itself. This week we take leave of the final chapters of the Pentecostarion and set off on a new trajectory until next winter, after the Feast of Theophany, we will – God willing – enter once more into that Paschal orbit which will take us once again to Holy Pascha and beyond. Of course, whilst this Sunday might be known as the first of “Ordinary time” no Sunday in the Church can be said to be “ordinary” time at all. All time in the Church is sacred and consecrated and imbued with deep spiritual meaning, if only we take the time to notice and understand. Let us now turn to our Gospel which we will interpret through the Tractates of St Chromotius of Aquileia, before moving onto consider how this reading relates to the Feast which we celebrate on this day, the Feast of the Kazan Ikon of the Theotokos.
In today’s Sunday Gospel we are in the Gospel of St Matthew and our Saviour had just come down from Mount Eremos, the Mount which is known as the Mount of the Beatitudes has long been identified as the site of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount which is recorded in chapters 5 – 7 of St Matthew’s Gospel. We then hear at the beginning of chapter eight that after hearing His wondrous teaching – ‘When he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him’. Our Saviour next encounters a leper who humbly asks for healing which he grants immediately as well as directing him to go to the priest to carry out what was required in the Law. And then after this, He comes further along the North western part of the Sea of Galilee and onto the village of Capernaum which is where our Sunday Gospel reading begins –
And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, And saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented.
Capernaum was where our Saviour settled after leaving Nazareth at the beginning of His ministry and in chapter nine is described as His ‘own city’. This village was also by tradition where the Apostle Peter had his own home which was later marked by an Octagonal Byzantine Church. Although the first healing miracle that our Saviour worked upon coming down from the mountain was to a son of the Kingdom, a lost sheep of the House of Israel, there is no doubt whatsoever that this Centurion, in his Roman armour. A centurion was the commander of a military unit called a century, which as it sounds, originally consisted of one hundred legionaries. By the time of the 1st century AD, it is more likely that the unit would have dropped to around 80 legionaries. These centurions would have been strong, wealthy and powerful people that would have had many servants in addition to all the legionaries directly under his command. Given Capernaum’s position at the very northern end of the Sea of Galillee and beside an important Highway, it is likely that there would have been a custom’s station here, and this would have required a military presence to enforce and secure it. We thus can see our reading today as being one of the first direct interactions our Saviour has with the full might and power of the Roman Empire, in the person of this nameless Centurion. Of course, most centurions rose to power and influence normally through being fearsome soldiers and men of authority whose vine-staffs were used to mete our discipline to their troops. In antiquity, it was a well-known joke that centurions were often cruel disciplinarians. Yet, this nameless Centurion of the Gospel, certainly does not display such a callous disregard for his men or even his domestic servants. Instead, we see him personally taking it upon himself to go and find someone who would be able to heal his paralysed servant who he touchingly says, is ‘grievously tormented’. It is difficult to imagine a Herod or a Pilate engaging in such concern for the lowly servants and slaves under them, yet it is this love that the Centurion shows.
And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him.
Just as our Lord had instantly healed the leper that came to him, without a moment’s hesitation, so too here do we see the Lord’s willingness to come and heal this centurion’s servant. It is here though that something quite extraordinary happens. Rather than simply accompanying the Saviour to his home, as Jairus and several others in the Gospel had done, we next hear the nameless Centurion saying something entirely unexpected.
The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.
St Chromatius in his homily or Tractate on this passage says –
How glorious is the faith of the centurion and how wonderful his devotion, which believed in the Son of God with such perfect faith and with no instruction from the law!
This Gentile centurion would have been a Roman pagan, one who would not have known any of the Jewish Scriptures and would not have known the Messianic prophesies about the coming of God in the Flesh, yet he addresses our Saviour in no uncertain terms, as the Lord (o’ Kyrios) and as the omnipotent God able to heal everywhere and anywhere, and not through having to do anything physical but by divine dictat, by His word alone. How extraordinary it is that our Saviour can openly walk amongst the Elders of the Jewish people, those educated in the Law, and despite seeing His miracles, and despite hearing His words, they still refuse to acknowledge Him as the Messiah and God Incarnate. Yet, this Centurion, beholds Jesus and sees the Incarnate Divine Healer. His vision is clear and his eyes unclouded by envy, pride and malice. As St Chromatius acknowledges, the confession of the centurion –
Is a confession of a very advanced faith and perfect knowledge, to confess the omnipotence in such a way that one believes that all things are possible for him.
And with this confession of faith in Christ’s omnipotence, his power to work miracles instantly by his word alone, there is also accompanied a most beautiful and touching humility. As he says –
‘I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.’
I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof
The mighty centurion with such power, with such influence, with such riches, with so many men and servants, in front of Christ, God-Incarnate, can only see his unworthiness, his sinfulness. As St Chromatius explains –
The Lord disposed to go to the place where the paralytic was lying, but the centurion, full of faith and very aware of his own lowliness, professes that he is unworthy of such a great act of condescension on the Lord’s part, and excuses such a great burden of divine condescension.
When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.
It was the centurion’s faith and faith-inspired humility that makes our Lord see him as towering above all of God’s chosen people, all the priests, all the scribes, all the Jewish people he had come across.
In the second part of his Tractate, St Chromatius then explores the spiritual meaning behind the letter of the text of our Gospel reading. In the figure of the paralysed Centurian’s servant, St Chromatius sees ‘a type of the Gentile people … who lie in the home of this world out of joint in soul and body, burdened down with serious transgressions’. Developing his spiritual interpretation further, St Chromatius sees the house of the Centurion represents, ‘the world, which he [the centurion] attests is unworthy of God, defiled by the sacrileges of the Gentiles and by the superstitions of idols and by all sins … [so that] the polluted dwelling place of the Gentiles was still unworthy of the Son of God. Finally, through the humble centurion’s request to ‘speak the word only’, ‘the Lord would appoint through the apostles the word of the divine preaching for the salvation of the Gentiles after his passion’.
And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
How fitting it is that just a week after our celebration of the labours of the saints of the furthest west we hear this beautiful prophesy of our Lord speaking of the future children of God, and inheritors of His Kingdom who would shine forth from the lands of the Gentiles from the east to the west.
And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour.
Today we also celebrate the feast of the Appearance of the Kazan Ikon of the Theotokos. I myself had the wonderful privilege of being able to venerate this wonderworking Ikon in the Cathedral of St Petersburg. Although I had seen the Kazan Ikon many times, I remember being completely stunned and bowled-over by the spiritual power of this Ikon, and the love-worn beauty of this large open face of the Mother of God tilted towards her Divine Son. It is said that the original ikon came from Constantinople in the 13th Century to Kazan which during this period until the 16th Century was under Muslim control as part of the Golden Horde and later the Kazan Khanate which had a tense relationship with the expanding Tsardom of Rus. The Kazanskaya Ikon is a distinctive variant of the traditional Hodegetria ikon of the Mother of God. Normally in this style of ikon, it is the hands of the Mother of God which point the way, direct the way of the viewer to Christ. However, in the Kazan Ikon, it is not the hands but the eyes of the Mother of God which direct us down to her Son who stands erect and blessing us. We can imagine that this ikon, and the kindly eyes and meek open face of the Mother of God, must have consoled the Christians of Kazan in those years of trouble, and also converted the hearts of some of the Gentile and pagan peoples of that place. For 150 years the ikon was buried in the earth in order to protect it from the hands of the savage Tartars. However, the ikon’s location was revealed to the faithful through the witness of a small child. In 1579, our Lady appeared in a series of dreams to the daughter of an archer, Matrona. We know that our Lady loves the humble and the downtrodden and it is no surprise again, that she should choose to appear not to the mighty and proud of this world, to those who considered themselves something, but to an innocent and simple child. Matrona and her mother appealed to the clergy and even the archbishop about the dream, but they were ignored and dismissed, perhaps in the same way as the Jews in the time of Christ, might have dismissed the faithfulness of the Gentiles. In desperation Matrona and her mother went to the site which the Mother of God had told them in a dream and began to dig through the dirt and eventually, on July 8th they found the ikon wrapped in a cloth, bright as if it had just been painted. The ikon immediately worked miracles, healing two people that were blind, and Tsar Ivan the Terrible appointed a new church to be built on the site of its discovery and a convent which Matrona and her mother entered. The Kazan Ikon of the Theotokos is one of the most-loved and deeply venerated ikons of the Mother of God. The ikon is also seen as a powerful ikon of Protection when its presence protected the people of Russia from the armies of the Poles, the Swedes and Napoleon. This ikon, however, should not be seen, as I saw it referenced in a wikipidia article as an ikon associated with Russian nationalism. This ikon, like all ikons, are not for just one particular people, not just for the Russian people, but for the whole world, or as was said in our Gospel reading today, from the east and west. The Mother of God, is the Mother of the whole Christian race and will never turn her motherly, loving gaze, her radiant and meek face, away from any that turn to her with love and humbleness of heart.
Dear Father, brothers and sisters, as we come forward to receive Holy Communion today let us be once again reminded of those profound words of the Righteous Centurion which are echoed in that beautiful Prayer of St John Chrysostom that we read before Communion.
O Lord my God, I know that I am not worthy or sufficient that Thou shouldest come under the roof of the house of my soul, for all is desolate and fallen, and Thou hast not with me a place fit to lay Thy head. But as from the highest heaven Thou didst humble Thyself for our sake, so now conform Thyself to my humility. And as Thou didst consent to lie in a cave and in a manger of dumb beasts, so also consent to lie in the manger of my unspiritual soul and to enter my defiled body.
Let us today ask the Mother of God, through her wonderworking Ikon of Kazan, to grant us the humility that we, who are unworthy, might, through her intercession, become worthy to have our Saviour in His Most Precious Body and Blood coming to dwell in the fallen, destitute and dilapidated houses of our wretched souls and bodies.
Most Holy Theotokos, save us!
Amen.