Isaiah 65:17-21
John 4:43-54
Francis Martin writes that
“Many of our Lenten texts have been instructions that enable us to live our share in Christ's life more deeply. Some have revealed to us aspects of the Paschal Mystery, the death and resurrection of Christ, and a few have invited us into the sanctuary of his own inner life.
“From this point until Easter all the gospel texts will be from the Gospel of John, and they will serve to bring us more deeply into the mystery of Jesus' death and glorification.
“Today's texts begin this period with a prophecy that points to the meaning of Jesus' act of love on the cross and the fruit that this act will bear for us and for all of humanity.
“Isaiah, or more likely someone in the 'school' of Isaiah writing some two hundred years later, delivers a word of promise from God. The message creates for us a symbolic understanding of what will be when God creates a 'new heaven and a new earth.'
“This prophecy is being fulfilled in Christ's creative work, the Church.
“The work was completed on the cross and in the Resurrection and sending of the Holy Spirit, but the full manifestation of that work awaits the moment when the new creation extends to the heavens and the earth and the new Jerusalem.
“John's gospel shows us the life of Jesus fulfilling prophesy and being a prophesy of the life of the Church—that is, our life—until he returns. Today's account of Jesus' healing of the royal official's son is an example of this.
“Let us pay attention to the details of John's narrative and try to enter into what effect this action of Jesus, mediated to us by John's theological artistry, is meant to have in our lives.
“First, Jesus is at Cana, 'where he had made the water wine'--that is, where the splendid water of the old dispensation became the wine of the life of the Holy Spirit.
"John takes pains to point out to us that the healing of the official's son is 'now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.' The first sign was for the Jews, the second for the Gentiles.
“Then again, this is a healing at a distance, as are the other gospel miracles that have to do explicitly with non-Jews: those of the centurion's son and the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman.
“When we reflect upon the meaning of these actions we can see, first, that Jesus, by this and other healings, has initiated the era prophesied by Isaiah. Second, we see that distance is no obstacle to him now.
“In this time of the Church, Jesus still heals and forgives 'at a distance.' That is, he may be absent in one way, but he is present in another.
“We should go to him as did the royal official, the centurion, and the foreign woman, and ask not only for ourselves but also for those who need to know his power experientially.
"The result of the healing narrated in today's gospel was that the royal official 'believed, and all his household.' Our answered prayers can have the same result.”
Posted by John
at 12:01 AM CST
