Word and Faith: God is not bound to an external expression
(Mt 8:5-17)
Mt writes his Gospel to encourage community members and stimulate the mission to the Gentiles, which the Jewish Christians were not yet ready to make their own.
The incipient Faith of a converted pagan is the example that Jesus sets before that of the observant Israelites.
But to say Faith (vv.10.13) means to advocate a deeper adhesion, and [together] a less strong manifestation.
What heals is believing in the efficacy of his only Word (vv.8-9.16), an event that possesses generative and re-creative power.
In the Judaizing communities of Galilee and Syria, still in the mid-70s one wondered: does the new Law of God proclaimed on ‘the Mount’ of Beatitudes creates exclusions?
Or does it correspond to the hopes and deep sensitivity of the human heart, of every place and time (vv.10-12)?
The distant possessed a strong insight into the novelties of the Spirit, and discovered the experience of Faith from other positions - not installed, less linked to conformal concatenations; perhaps uncomfortable.
Not infrequently they were just the latest arrivals who stood out for their freshness of substantial intuition - and saw clearly.
It was enough to communicate one-one with the Lord, in a sense of sure friendship (v.6).
There is no need for who knows what additions to this secret, to be reborn. God is Immediate Action (v.7).
The personal relationship between the common man and the Father in Christ is sober and instantaneous.
Starting from his simple experience, the centurion understands the "remote" value of the Word and the magnet-effect of the true Faith [which does not claim "contacts" or material and local elements: vv.8-9].
In short, cultural and religious conformism remained a burden.
Here and there were missing both the experience of personal Christ the Saviour, and the complete discovery of full Life’s power contained in the new total and ‘creative’ proposal of «the Mount».
But there is nothing to fear: God has preceded us; the different and far away is not a stranger, but brother.
Therefore, what saves is not belonging to a tradition or new fashion of thought and worship.
Not demanding that the Lord arrives in a certain form means not imagining Him tied to an external expression.
We can achieve and grasp Him only intimately, for certain vision - uncluttered with indispensable imagined beliefs - no matter what happens.
He will be revealed time by time in the way best suited to our limits.
In short, those distant from us are totally «worthy» people, although sometimes wavering - like everyone else.
God is in their flesh and in their hearth.
And in Christ we are educated to dilate the horizon of external vertical relations, typical of a lowered head religiosity.
The divine Face is already within the things of our environment, and in persons that Providence puts next to us - even across borders.
[Saturday 12.th wk. in O.T. June 27, 2026]
