🏞️Like the exiled people of God, who by the rivers of Babylon longed for Mount Zion, today's liturgy invites us to meditate on our condition as pilgrims in this world. We are exiles yearning for our heavenly homeland. This time of earthly life, therefore, is not for rest, but for a journey lived in a spirit of humility and penance. We must seize every moment to discern and fulfill the will of God, as the Epistle exhorts us. In our afflictions and in the face of spiritual death, the Gospel teaches us to imitate the royal official: to cry out with insistent faith for the Lord to come and heal us, help us, and finally, lead us to eternal glory.
📖 Epistle (Eph 5:15-21)
Brethren: See therefore, brethren, how you walk circumspectly: not as unwise, but as wise: redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore, become not unwise: but understanding what is the will of God. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is luxury: but be ye filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual canticles, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord: giving thanks always for all things, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God and the Father: being subject one to another, in the fear of Christ.
✝️ Gospel (John 4:46-53)
At that time, there was a certain ruler, whose son was sick at Capharnaum. He having heard that Jesus was come from Judea into Galilee, went to him and prayed him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Jesus therefore said to him: Unless you see signs and wonders, you believe not. The ruler saith to him: Lord, come down before that my son die. Jesus saith to him: Go thy way. Thy son liveth. The man believed the word which Jesus said to him and went his way. And as he was going down, his servants met him: and they brought word, saying that his son lived. He asked therefore of them the hour wherein he grew better. And they said to him: Yesterday, at the seventh hour, the fever left him. The father therefore knew that it was at the same hour that Jesus said to him: Thy son liveth. And himself believed, and his whole house.
🤔 Reflections
🙏Today's Gospel presents us with a powerful catechesis on the nature of faith. The royal official approaches Jesus with an initial, still imperfect faith, one that seeks physical presence and the sight of a miracle: "Lord, come down before that my son die." Christ's response, "Unless you see signs and wonders, you believe not," is not a refusal but an invitation to a higher faith. St. Augustine comments that the Lord, while rebuking the desire for signs, still grants the request, showing that His mercy condescends to our weakness in order to lift us to a purer trust (St. Augustine, Tractate on the Gospel of John, 16). The official's true conversion occurs when he renounces the need to see in order to believe. He "believed the word which Jesus said to him and went his way." This is the faith the Church calls us to cultivate: a total adherence to the word of Christ, even when tangible evidence is absent. It is the faith that believes God's Word is effective in itself, for He, who is Truth, can neither deceive nor be deceived.
⏳St. Paul's exhortation in the Epistle, "redeeming the time, because the days are evil," echoes the urgency of the royal official. This nobleman did not procrastinate; he knew his son's life hung by a thread. Likewise, the "evil days" described by the Apostle refer to our pilgrimage in this world, a time of trial and spiritual exile, where eternal death threatens us. To be "understanding what is the will of God" is the antidote to foolishness. The will of God, in this context, was clearly discerned by the official: to seek Jesus, the only source of life. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that "Prayer is a vital necessity. Proof from the contrary is no less convincing: if we do not allow the Spirit to lead us, we fall back into the slavery of sin" (CCC, 2744). The official's journey to Cana is an icon of our own prayer life: a movement out of ourselves, an insistent search for the Savior, with the awareness that without Him, we perish.
⛪The liturgy of this day weaves a cohesive spiritual tapestry. The theme of exile, suggested in the Offertory, places us with the people of Israel by the rivers of Babylon, weeping for Zion. Our Zion is the heavenly homeland. The illness of the official's son symbolizes the condition of all humanity, sick with sin and destined for death. The answer lies not in ourselves, but in going to Christ. The faith in His omnipotent word, which heals from a distance, is the same faith demanded of us in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. There, the words of consecration, pronounced in persona Christi, do not merely symbolize but effect what they signify, making present the Body and Blood that heal us from eternal death. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that Christ's word possesses a divine operative power; when He says, "Go thy way. Thy son liveth," His word instantly performs the healing (Summa Theologica, III, q. 43, a. 4). Thus, when we receive Communion, we do not just ask Christ to heal someone at a distance, but that He Himself would come and live in us, transforming our exile into an anticipation of heavenly glory, filling us with the Holy Spirit so that we may, as the Epistle says, sing and make melody in our hearts to the Lord, even amidst the trials of these "evil days."
➡️See English version of the critical articles here.
