We all believe that the Lord, who created this world, has complete power over nature. That is as easy to imagine as an officer commanding soldiers on a parade ground: at his command they all turn right, and at another they all turn left!

But do we believe that the Lord can heal a sick person before our eyes—just like that: He speaks, and the person recovers? “Well,” we might say, “in theory we believe that too...” Do we see the enormous difference between theoretical belief in God's omnipotence and faith in a miracle that directly concerns us? No such gap existed in the military mind of the Roman centurion: his faith was not theoretical but living—and a miracle occurred. Perhaps the Lord would not find such faith not only in Israel...

Today we return again to such a fundamental concept as faith. In the Bible this word most often means not simply trust in some information, but the ability at a critical moment to "take hold" of God, to lean on Him as on a firm pillar or rock.

Today's story about the Roman officer who asked Jesus to heal his servant, and whom Christ sets as an example for His disciples, illustrates this well. He is a military man, trained in army discipline, and he is absolutely certain that his order will be carried out, just as he himself is ready to carry out the order of his commander. In his relationship with God, such confidence rests not on discipline and military order, where a soldier is punished with death for disobedience, but on something no less strong: namely, on faith.

Strictly speaking, when Scripture speaks about faith, it is speaking about faith that is stronger even than death, so that the sick are healed and the dead are raised.

As in all the cases of resurrection and healing mentioned by the evangelists, here before us is the manifestation of the Kingdom that Jesus brought into the world. In this Kingdom there is no place for sickness or death, and everyone who comes into contact with it receives life and health in all their fullness, insofar as such fullness is accessible to him within the framework of humanity not yet transformed.

But the Kingdom is not simply some place or space, even one that is somehow specially arranged or organized. The Kingdom is first of all relationships binding people with Christ and with one another. One could even say that the Kingdom as a special kind of place or space is determined by these relationships and depends on them. Indeed, if we take, for example, the story of the healing of the centurion's servant, here there is not really any single continuous physical or mystical space: at the moment when the centurion's servant was healed, Jesus was quite far from him, and the servant himself very possibly may not even have known that his master was asking for his healing. But there is one spiritual space, and it is generated by the relationships of love and trust that bound the centurion both to his servant and to Jesus.

It is quite obvious that the centurion had an altogether special attitude toward his servant, who in the original is directly called a slave: such concern for a sick slave was plainly unusual for Romans, who were by no means inclined to sentimentality. Evidently this love forced him to turn to the Teacher, about whom all kinds of rumors circulated among the people, but about whom it was known for certain that He healed everyone ready to trust Him. And the centurion truly managed to trust Jesus in a way that, according to Jesus' own testimony, few had trusted Him even among the people of God, verse 9: he did not dare call the Teacher to his house, being completely certain that His desire alone would be enough for healing, verses 6-8.

The measure of trust and love proved so great that the Kingdom became a reality not only for the centurion himself, but also for his servant, who did not see Jesus at all and perhaps even knew nothing about Him. Thus relationships give birth to the Kingdom. And then it becomes clear why Jesus is ready to enter every house where He is awaited. For those who wait for Him and receive Him thereby increase the space of the Kingdom, themselves becoming part of it, and therefore its witnesses and servants. The same kind of witnesses and servants Jesus wants to see in each of us.