NOTES for Mat 8:1-4

Christianity is probably unique precisely because it unites things that seem irreconcilable from the point of view of our earthly reason. Why are two seemingly different passages included in today’s reading? Perhaps because the first speaks of prudence and the second immediately afterward of recklessness: the prudence of building a secure house on rock and the recklessness of touching a leper. How can the two be joined? Here lies the profound essence of Christianity. Holy foolishness and dogmatic purity may seem to have nothing in common, but they are two poles encompassing the whole world. The rigorous rational thinker Thomas Aquinas and the remarkable mystics Francis of Assisi and John of the Cross. The philosopher Solovyov and the mystics of the Name-Glorification movement. We all form one body, because when you dedicate yourself to Christ, you dedicate your whole being: reason and soul, heart and mind.

When healing the leper, Christ touched him. He could have healed him without touching him, as He had healed many others more than once, but it was precisely the man sick with leprosy whom He allowed to feel the touch of His hands.

Such a touch was impossible according to the norms of conduct in that society, because it defiled the one who touched and made him an outcast. Therefore Christ's touch, besides healing the illness, meant a breach in the wall of loneliness and rejection; it returned the healed man to the world of people and gave him equal standing. At the same time it was Christ's testimony about Himself as the One who cannot be defiled, but who Himself cleanses from defilement and is ready to enter the company of the most rejected. True, at that moment this remained hidden from those around Him.

The healing of the Roman centurion's servant opened a breach in another wall - the wall between Jews and Gentiles. One can imagine how unusual it was for the disciples to hear Christ say that no such faith had been found in Israel as in a Roman.

But the words that many will come from east and west are addressed not only to the ancient Jews. They are spoken for everyone who would like to turn the Truth into a national attribute and who thinks it acceptable to boast and exalt himself over an ancient spiritual inheritance as though it were ancestral glory...

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.

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.

It is worth recalling how houses were built in Palestine in Gospel times. Then (as, for that matter, often today) builders did not need a strong artificial foundation: the soil of Palestine itself is rocky, and to reach stone it is enough to remove only a comparatively small layer of sand and clay. On the other hand, if this is not done, during the winter rains a house can easily "float away": streams caused by heavy downpours quite easily wash away the not very thick upper layer. It is clear that Jesus compares a person seeking the Kingdom with a house builder who removes the unreliable alluvial layer from the reliable rock.

It is not hard to guess that this concerns the spiritual foundation on which a person builds his own life. Evidently, this is the ordinary spiritual state of fallen man, when he does not think about how, by what, and for what he lives, but simply drifts with the current. And even if in such a state this person tries somehow to direct his life, the attempts usually fail: in order to solve the task one has set, one needs to know something about the spiritual foundations of what one is trying to influence. But fallen man, who does not think about spiritual life, sees only the fluid and unreliable surface of the reality around him, forever changing and always elusive, on which it is impossible to build anything and on which one cannot even lean, so changeable and inconstant is it.

And only after a person penetrates deep, breaking through the surface of things to their essence, does he discover the real foundation: God, spiritual life, and then Christ and the Kingdom. And he finds that very rock on which he can calmly build his life because that rock will not fail him.