By Fr. Salvic T. Pajarillo, O.Carm.
Saturday of the 12th Week in Ordinary Time
First Reading: Lamentations 2:2, 10-14, 18-19
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 74:1b-2, 3-5, 6-7, 20-21
Gospel: Matthew 8:5-17
The first reading today is from Lamentations.
The title of the book, Lamentations, aptly describes its tone and content. The book is a series of laments that rise up from the people of Israel as they try to come to terms with the destruction of the city of Jerusalem and their land and the resulting experience of exile in Babylon.
The most frequent type of psalm in the Book of Psalms is the psalm of lament. There are more prayers of lamentation in the Book of Psalms than any other type of prayer. That statistic may be saying something about the human condition; it may also suggest that we tend to approach God more in times of need than in times of plenty.
In the gospel we have the story of someone who approaches Jesus in his time of need, not a member of the people of Israel but a Roman centurion, a pagan. He comes before Jesus with a cry of lament, “my servant is lying at home paralyzed, and in great pain.” He doesn’t make an explicit request to Jesus, but his lament before Jesus has an implicit request, “help my servant; help me.”
Every lament is, at its core, a cry for help. This particular pagan displayed extraordinary sensitivity to Jesus as well as tremendous faith in him. He presumed Jesus, a Jew, would be hesitant to enter the house of a pagan and he believed that Jesus could heal his servant at a distance with his word.
His initial lament found expression in a wonderful prayer of petition, “I am not worthy?” A version of this centurion’s prayer of petition has become part of the text of the Mass.
Today, let us take a moment to make this version of the centurion’s prayer our own, trusting, as he did, that this is a prayer that Jesus will indeed answer.
Fr. Salvic is a Carmelite missionary in Papua New Guinea.