In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!

Today’s Gospel gives us a living example of love in the person of a pagan Roman soldier-centurion. By his position the Roman centurion was not only the master but, the owner over each Jew. But because of his love to his Jew servant, he himself has become a slave! Because of his love to the Jew servant the deepest humility comes out from the heart of the pagan-centurion. Who is Christ for him? For the Roman-pagan Christ is only a Jew who is under his control. He doesn’t know Christ as the Messiah, he only hears of him as of a wonderful person. He can order Christ to come, he can send his subordinates for him. But he doesn’t do so. He goes to Christ himself. Whom does he go to ask Christ for? For his relative? No, for the Jew’s servant. A centurion, a Roman citizen-officer asks a Jew, as Christ was for him, asks for mercy.

“Oh, Lord, my servant is lying at home in great pain”, – so much mercy in these words, so much love to his suffering slave! And this love has been brought to Christ by a pagan-centurion. Love and humility, light and hearty warmth are the beginning of the Kingdom of God in the heart of the pagan-centurion.

The Lord answers the centurion simply, “I will come and heal him”. And here the heart of the centurion opens deeper. He exclaims, “I am not worthy to have you under my roof. I am not worthy”. He finds himself sinful and says to Christ, “Just say only the word and my servant will be cured”. The pagan-centurion showed his faith about which the Lord said, “In no one in Israel have I found faith as great as this; go back, then; let this be done for you, as your faith demands”. And the servant was cured at that moment. It was award to the centurion for his love, humility and faith.

We see the most important Christian virtues in the centurion: faith, very strong indeed, mercy and love to a person who is not only a stranger for him but is under his control, and great humility. So his servant was cured at that moment. “A prayer of a righteous person can do a lot”.

The centurion was a righteous one and the Lord heard him at once. And if the Lord doesn’t fulfil our prayers at once, this is not because He doesn’t hear us. The Lord hears everything. He knows even our thoughts. Then why is He slow? Because we are from righteous ones. The Lord loves righteous people and is mercy to sinners. So if we want God to be merciful to us, want Him to fulfil our requests, then we must connect our will with the will of God. The centurion came up to the Saviour with faith, love and humility and asked to heal his servant. And if the Lord Jesus Christ had answered him: “you know God wants your servant to be sick”, – then you can be sure that he would have left Him with humility and said, “Thy will be done”. But God wanted the boy to be cured.

We often want God to give us a lot of things. And we don’t get them not only because there is no faith and humility in our prayer but often there is no love in our prayer. For the most part there is self-love in it because we usually ask for ourselves. And even if we pray for anybody, we most often do it not in mercy to this person but because his hard fate annoys us, it is difficult for us to stand it. So we ask for Him to get relief for ourselves. Seeing it, the Lord doesn’t put an end to our sorrow. He waits when our faith will become strong, when our mercy to our neighbor will grow, when our humility will give a way to God’s grace.

And the image of this evangelic centurion must be imprinted in our mind and heart, we must understand that if we want to get something from God at once, we must, first of all, have strong faith that the Lord hears us. And if He doesn’t give us anything at this very moment, then it means we don’t need it. We must have the greatest humility and ask God for something with humility. We must be ready to accept what the Lord will give us in spite of our requests and not to require from him anything as it usually takes place with us: we usually keep worrying everybody to get what we want, and if we don’t manage to do it, we despair. And if we want the Lord visit us, praise us, rejoice at our deeds, thoughts and words, we must acquire virtues which that centurion had. Amen.