NOTES for Mat 8:16-17

The evangelist Matthew chooses an astonishing quotation from the Old Testament to explain the countless miraculous healings performed by the Lord Jesus Christ. From the whole vast "victory" tradition of the Old Testament, which tells of the coming kingdom of the Messiah, he recalls the strangest and most difficult prophecy of Isaiah about the rejection of the Messiah, the prophecy of the Cross. All these healings, in the evangelist's thought, happen because Christ "took our infirmities and bore our diseases."

Human thinking is arranged in such a way that we imagine the healing God as a kind doctor, differing from Doctor Aybolit only in that He can heal everything. But this is far from an exact or complete idea. Christ heals because on the Cross He takes upon Himself our infirmities and diseases. The instrument of healing is the Cross of Christ, on which He shares our sufferings. The apostle Paul writes in First Corinthians: "...you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God..." (1 Cor. 6:20). Remembering this price is necessary so that we do not remain ungrateful.

Our God, the God of harmony and order, dearly loves what we call the "golden mean" or the "royal path." He, who holds the universe in balance, knows how difficult it is to find balance. And for us, people who do not possess His wisdom and vision, it is practically impossible not to slide into one of the extremes that open before us. This kind of tightrope walking is beyond our strength, especially since we are trying to walk this rope not as saints, leaving everything behind in trust in God, but with all the bundles of our own ideas about what is right and what is not, with all our cultural and other baggage. Perhaps these things are useful in some respects, but on the way to God they only cloud our sight. And then we become very much like the person in today's Gospel reading who approached Jesus second (see Matt. 8:21-22): it is very hard for us to part with what separates us from God.

This call, which appears cruel to many, to leave one's unburied father and follow Jesus, conveys very precisely what the Lord truly wants from us. He proposes that we not cling to this world, but, having weighed everything, renounce temptations and set out on the path toward happiness. Yet this must be done in a measured way, because against one extreme, not daring to follow Christ, there is always another: to run headlong without knowing where, making a mess in the process and deeply wounding those around us. Christ gently checks such an unbridled follower (see Matt. 8:19-20) and calls him to a measured decision.

It turns out that following God requires at the same time both radicalism, the resolve to follow Christ leaving everything behind, and a serious act of will, the utmost collectedness. What remains is to learn to find balance...

It is hardly accidental that Matthew emphasizes that the sick were brought to Christ when evening had come. This can indicate that people were afraid to come in daylight. But it can also testify that all this was taking place on the Sabbath and that people came immediately after the end of the Sabbath rest, without losing a minute.

Let us note that Peter's healed mother-in-law immediately began to serve, and in this way she not only returned to the household concerns familiar to her, but also began to serve Christ in the way familiar to her. We do not meet any further mention of her anywhere, and nowhere is it said that Christ sent her to any special ministry. But one can serve Christ in any place, amid ordinary occupations.

Yet those who want to be near Him He confronts with the reality of difficulties. Jesus warns the scribe who promises to follow Christ wherever He goes about the hardships and about the fact that one should not count on comfort. That answer is understandable. But His answer to another disciple, who wants to bury his father, causes perplexity. Here too, thanks to commentators who know ancient customs, we can understand that the disciple's father is alive, which means the disciple intends to sit at home for years instead of following Christ.

Yet it is impossible to avoid forever the choice of whether to follow Christ or not.

“And Jesus says to him: foxes have dens and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” When we read these words from today’s Gospel reading, we are pierced by a wondrous tenderness for our Lord, by an incomparable compassion and a desire to give Him shelter... But that is impossible: He lived then and there, while we are here and now. Yet this is the divine nature of Jesus, what distinguishes Him from man: right here and now we can give Him shelter—our heart. May each person’s heart become the place where the Lord lays His head. Let us pray in such a way that the Lord comes to us not to labor, but to rest; may He find repose and peace in our heart, for He is very tired.

It is interesting: whom, after all, does Jesus call “sons of the Kingdom”? In traditional Semitic usage, whether Hebrew or Aramaic, this expression denotes those who belong to the Kingdom. If so, judging by the context of the saying, one must conclude that Jesus is speaking about His own people, about the Jews, about the people of God. It is clear that belonging to the Jewish people does not in itself guarantee salvation or entry into the Kingdom: it is only a good foundation on which one can build one’s salvation. Yet the meaning of the Saviour’s words seems to be that He speaks of those who belong to the Jewish people as already possessing the Kingdom, but as capable of losing it under certain conditions. What, then, does He mean? And what Kingdom could have been spoken of before His coming into the world? Perhaps the answer lies in the very history of the covenant—the history of God’s relationship with His people. From the beginning, that history implied not only a beginning but also an end, a fulfilment, and therefore the Kingdom. According to the Creator’s design, the destiny of everyone who belongs to the people of God should be fulfilled in the Kingdom. The whole history of the covenant has meaning only in this context. And the Kingdom embraces not only our present but also our past and our future; it includes the fullness of the ages and all existing time. For the Kingdom, apparently, there is no past, present and future in our sense: what is real for it is only what forms part of it, and from the Kingdom’s point of view the whole world is divided into what belongs to the Kingdom and what does not. The time of our world plays no special role here, so that if someone or something is related to the Kingdom, even potentially, then from the point of view of those who dwell in the Kingdom, that person or thing also belongs to it. Our untransformed world begins to perceive their belonging to the Kingdom only when the Kingdom is revealed to it in the fullness necessary for such understanding. It is therefore not surprising that Jesus, looking at the situation precisely from within the Kingdom, sees the whole people of God, and each of its members individually, as belonging to the Kingdom. Yet, on the other hand, the history of this people also unfolds in our untransformed world; in essence, it is—or at least ought to have been—the history of that people’s transformation. As long as this process is not complete, the journey into the Kingdom is not complete either. This means that it is still possible to turn away from this path and not enter the place to which it led.

How strange we would look if we came to a doctor with a broken arm, asking for help but not allowing him to touch it. The same can be said of our prayer asking for help, but without faith...

In response to the centurion's request, Jesus did not say something like "let what you ask be done for you" or "your servant has recovered; go." He says: "Go; and as you have believed, let it be done for you" (Matt. 5:13). In this way He tells us the main thing: it is not enough simply to ask; faith is necessary. It is faith that fills the request with "power," makes it real and full. For if one asks someone for help without believing that it can be given, one will scarcely receive it. Besides, if we do not believe that the Lord can help us, we in effect close the road to Him, that is, we simply do not give Him the opportunity to provide that very help.

That is why Christ said: "Have faith in God. For truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours" (Mark 11:23-24).

The evangelist Matthew leads his account very consistently. Having told us in chapter 4 what Jesus' public ministry consisted of, remember: the preaching of the Gospel of the Kingdom, healing, and the building of the Church, he gives an example of the preaching in chapters 5-7, and now tells about healings and other miracles.

There were many miracles, and Matthew selects for his account those that seem to him most revealing and important for a Jewish reader. In the healing of the leper, the significant moments are Jesus' touch of the sick man; one must not touch a leper!; and the command to show himself to the priest and offer the sacrifice. Jesus does not neglect the law of Moses, but surpasses it by mercy. In the case of the centurion, Jesus communicates with a Gentile; one must not associate with Gentiles!; but what, in fact, distinguishes a Gentile from a Jew? Faith. And the Lord shows that the centurion's living faith is stronger than Israel's traditional and bookish faith.

We see that the miracles are performed by Him not at random, but as a continuation of His preaching, and the apostle Matthew, as is his custom, gives an Old Testament foundation for this ministry of Jesus with a passage from the famous 53rd chapter of Isaiah.

In the Gospel we can find many stories about miraculous healings and the casting out of demons from different people. These miracles are usually called "signs," that is, they serve to show something. For example, in today's stories the miracles are meant to illustrate the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy about the coming of the Messiah, who was to "take upon Himself our infirmities and diseases."

For the first readers of the Gospel, who knew these prophecies by heart, the allusion was completely clear: these healings are only the beginning of the work of saving the world, which Christ accomplishes in history through His voluntary suffering (Isa. 53). Thus the context of this prophecy, and Matthew's references to it, leads us beyond the bounds of a particular miracle, which in general has little to do with us personally, and brings us into the history of the world's salvation, where all the events in which the prophecy was fulfilled have their place, and into our own life, when Christ saved our life, healed our sickness, and conquered evil around us or within us.