Fr Prodencio Bognay reads today from the Gospel of Matthew (8: 5-17) in which the centurion approaches Jesus asking for help for his seriously ill servant. Seeing the man’s faith, Jesus says, ‘Go; let it be done for you according to your faith’.

Fr Prodencio says, for the early Christians, the capacity of Jesus to perform miraculous healing was used as a proof of his divinity. It was used as a convincing material for non-Christians to accept Jesus as the Christ.

On the part of Jesus however, the highlight of his healing ministry was the strong conviction or belief of the individual person.

Jesus performed his ministry not as a powerful miracle dispenser but rather as somebody who recognised, acknowledged, and validated the faith of the individual person. In most of his healing ministry, he said “Your faith has healed you.” From our Gospel story today, he said, “Go back then; you have believed, so let this be done for you.”

This invites us to reflect on how much we believe and what exactly we are believing.

If we put all our trust and hopes in Jesus whom we read in our sacred scriptures, we can end up having blind faith. We can’t prove or disprove the impacts of our belief that is directed towards outside of our self.

On the other hand, if we reflect on the truthfulness of the teachings of Christ as to how it applies to us personally, then we can know and understand the impact of our own beliefs on our own life. This is not about believing in our own capacity. This is rather a proper recognition of God’s works in our life, that our own capacities are God’s gift.

For Jesus, to have faith does not simply mean we trust someone else. It is rather about experiencing God as we live. It is about recognising, acknowledging, and validating our sacred God-experiences or God-moments.

In closing, Fr Prodencio says let us pray that we may grow more in faith.