Miles (Latin for “soldier”)

As Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion approached him with this request: “Sir, my serving boy is at home in bed paralyzed, suffering painfully.” He said to him, “I will come and cure him.” “Sir,” the centurion said in reply, “I am not worthy to have you under my roof. Just give an order and my boy will get better. I am a man under authority myself and I have troops assigned to me. If I give one man the order, ‘Dismissed,’ off he goes. If I say to another, ‘Come here,’ he comes. If I tell my slave, ‘Do this,’ he does it.” Jesus showed amazement on hearing this and remarked to his followers, “I assure you, I have never found this much faith in Israel. Mark what I say! Many will come from the east and the west and will find a place at the banquet in the kingdom of God with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, while the natural heirs of the kingdom will be driven out into the dark. Wailing will be heard there, and the grinding of teeth.” To the centurion Jesus said, “Go home. It shall be done because you trusted.” That very moment the boy got better. Matthew 8, Gospel for today, First Monday of Advent, 2008

Jesus is not often amazed and not prone to giving exuberant compliments. But he does both in today’s extraordinary gospel. That he speaks at all with a Roman centurion is unusual. Jesus almost never associated with gentiles; he stayed with his own people. His people despised Romans and especially their brutal soldiers. (Recall the scenes in Gibson’s Passion.) Here, however, we have Jesus hitting it off immediately with the guy; there is a spontaneous and genuine “simpatico” between them.

How can you not like this centurion? He is compassionate: worried about his servant who is “suffering painfully.” He is humble: “I am not worthy…” But most important of all, he has faith in Jesus: “Just give an order…” How did he get this way?

It appears that his military service was a moral/spiritual preparation for his encounter with Jesus. He intuitively, professionally and deeply understands loyalty, trust, obedience, authority, teamwork, commitment, sacrifice and courage unto death. And so, he immediately and spontaneously feels camaraderie, a trust, a mutual respect with Jesus. They understand each other instantaneously and completely.

And Jesus responds with what may well be the grandest compliment in the Old or New Testament: “In all of Israel, I have not seen faith like this!” And he announces this about a gentile, an oppressor, a man given over to use of lethal force!

We might see here already a presentment of Roman Catholicism: the providential role to be played in our religion by the Pax Romana, Latin law, the Eternal City itself, the papacy, and the mediation of Rome, replacing Jerusalem almost immediately, as the hub of a Christian world which would stretch from east to west.

Jesus here is no political liberationist. He does not rant or complain about an invasion, imperial power, oppression or the use of torture. He completely transcends those categories and breaks open into an entirely distinct Kingdom. And he recognizes that the centurion was more prepared for this kingdom than were the entire people of Israel; and his novitiate was served in the Roman army. The practice of courage, honor, loyalty, obedience, trust, and authority had prepared the soldier for faith in the true King.

Catholics have traditionally honored the protective professions of the military, police, and firefighters as careers of honor and nobility, requiring a range of virtues in imitation of Christ our King, the Lion of Judah. Much of this heritage was lost in the Cultural Revolution of the 60s and so today we have mothers who would mutilate or emasculate their sons rather than have them serve their country in the military; we have Catholic schools inculcating a vague, effete pacifism and shipping bus loads of our young to Georgia to protest the School of the Americas. All of this reflects the contempt for masculinity arising from a wounded and confused feminism.

It is good for our young men to be groomed to be like the centurion: compassionate and humble, yet obedient and authoritative, in the image of the one who was both Lamb of God and Lion of Judah.