GAL 5:1, 13-1
​
Brothers and sisters:
For freedom Christ set us free;
so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.

For you were called for freedom, brothers and sisters.
But do not use this freedom
as an opportunity for the flesh;
rather, serve one another through love.
For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement,
namely, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
But if you go on biting and devouring one another,
beware that you are not consumed by one another.

I say, then: live by the Spirit
and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh. 
For the flesh has desires against the Spirit,
and the Spirit against the flesh;
these are opposed to each other,
so that you may not do what you want.
But if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

"I am free." 

"I choose life." 

"I choose love."

When do you choose freedom and when do you choose sin? Try to get confession today or sometime this week so you can fully embrace the freedom Christ has given us. 

Matthew 8: 5-17

​When Jesus entered Capernaum,
a centurion approached him and appealed to him, saying,
“Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully.” 
He said to him, “I will come and cure him.”
The centurion said in reply,
“Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof;
only say the word and my servant will be healed.
For I too am a man subject to authority,
with soldiers subject to me.
And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes;
and to another, ‘Come here,’ and he comes;
and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him,
“Amen, I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.
I say to you, many will come from the east and the west,
and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
at the banquet in the Kingdom of heaven,
but the children of the Kingdom
will be driven out into the outer darkness,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”
And Jesus said to the centurion,
“You may go; as you have believed, let it be done for you.”
And at that very hour his servant was healed.

Jesus entered the house of Peter,
and saw his mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever.
He touched her hand, the fever left her,
and she rose and waited on him. 

When it was evening, they brought him many
who were possessed by demons,
and he drove out the spirits by a word and cured all the sick,
to fulfill what had been said by Isaiah the prophet:

He took away our infirmities and bore our diseases.

​As I read this Gospel passage the first thing that popped in my head was “This is where that prayer came from!” The prayer I’m talking about is the one we say right before we begin Communion: “Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” Many common prayers we have in the Church (Mass, Hail Mary, Our Father, etc.) are almost word-for-word from scripture, so I always love being able to make those connections.

But as I sat with this passage more, the words and faith of the centurion really stuck me. First off, a centurion was a Roman officer, which is why he mentions he has soldiers subject to him. Being Roman (not Jewish) meant he probably believed in many gods and goddesses, so coming to Jesus with such confidence and faith that Jesus would heal his servant was a big deal.

The most impactful aspect of this passage for me is the reference we make in mass: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed.” At this point, Jesus had been healing several people, but he usually laid his hands on them or touched them in some way. This man was so confident in what Jesus could do that he knew as long as Jesus said the words his servant would be healed; Jesus didn’t have to be physically present to do the healing.

There are many times I ask for God to do something, but how confident am I that He will actually do it? More often than not I find myself in prayer only half-heatedly asking God what is on my heart. There are times when what I really want is not a part of God’s plan for me, but when I pray I need to be confident that God hears me and wants to answer my prayers.

I need to have faith like this centurion. He didn’t need Jesus to physically touch or be with his servant to know Jesus would heal him. Since Jesus is no longer physically walking on earth, it can be hard to feel His comfort and healing hand at work in our lives. But we need to remember that we are the hands and feet of Christ. Those times when we are down and someone walks up at the right time, that’s Jesus being there to comfort us.

We may not hear of as many miracles like the ones in the Gospel today, but Jesus can still work miracles. All we need is to go to prayer with confidence that God will hear us and have faith that He will answer our prayers. The answer may not be what we initially expected, but God always answers.

“Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed."

How confident am I that Jesus will hear and answer my prayers?

How do I need Jesus to heal me?

When I need help, who is the first person I turn to?​

"Only say the word and my servant will be healed."

“You may go; as you have believed, let it be done for you.”

​Be confident that God hears your prayers and have faith like the centurion that He will answer your prayers.

Isaiah 49:1-6

​Hear me, O coastlands,
listen, O distant peoples.
The LORD called me from birth,
from my mother’s womb he gave me my name.
He made of me a sharp-edged sword
and concealed me in the shadow of his arm.
He made me a polished arrow,
in his quiver he hid me.
You are my servant, he said to me,
Israel, through whom I show my glory.

Though I thought I had toiled in vain,
and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength,
yet my reward is with the LORD,
my recompense is with my God.
For now the LORD has spoken
who formed me as his servant from the womb,
that Jacob may be brought back to him
and Israel gathered to him;
and I am made glorious in the sight of the LORD,
and my God is now my strength!
It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant,
to raise up the tribes of Jacob,
and restore the survivors of Israel;
I will make you a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

Happy Feast Day! Today the Church celebrates the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, Jesus' relative and the one who came before Him to prepare the world for the coming of the Christ. John, about whom Jesus says that "no greater has been born of a woman," is celebrated today because his birth marks the start of our salvation. 

​​In today's First Reading which we just read, we hear the Prophet Isaiah talking about the promise of God to save His people and bring them into a new covenant with Him. Throughout the Old Testament, we hear the story of God creating covenants (these are "familial oaths," by which one person is brought into the family of another; covenants are very serious promises, almost always made through some sort of blood sacrifice) over and over again with His people, and His people repeatedly breaking those covenants. Think, for example, of the promise to Adam and Eve when they are given the land to till and guard, and promised that it will all be theirs, but then they break the promise by eating of the forbidden tree and they lose this inheritance. You can also think of Moses, who leads the people out of Egypt, but never sees the Promised Land due to his doubt and infidelity. 

In the great prophets of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others, we begin to hear of something like those covenants of old, only greater. Today, Isaiah tells us that, through his own words and his fidelity to the promise, God has made a promise that His salvation will reach the end of the earth. John, who was chosen from before his birth by God to be set apart for a purpose, is a key figure in bringing this to fruition: he labors to bring Israel back to the Lord and prepare them for the One to come who will bring about the salvation of all the world. 

There is a lot packed into those two paragraphs, but in the end it's all about this: God has made a promise of salvation, of hope, of joy, of eternal life, and ultimately of Himself to each one of us. This promise He has called each of us to receive from our birth. We were called to be brought into relationship with Him; we have been chosen for salvation through our Baptism, and now we have the chance to respond to the promise of God and begin to live in the joy and salvation offered to each of us through the life of grace in the Church here and now. 

As John the Baptist would say later in his life, "[Jesus] must increase, I must decrease." Today, as we realize that we are called from birth for a specific purpose, and we know that the purpose to which we have been called is salvation, let's focus on letting Him increase in our lives in order to experience the life of faith in its fullness. Jesus has a plan for you and for me, a plan He has ordained since before we were even a thought in the minds of our parents; if we let Him increase in our lives, we can learn to live in the beauty and the goodness of that calling. 

"The LORD called me from birth,
from my mother’s womb he gave me my name."

​How can I ask the Lord to increase in my life today?

What does it mean to my life that God has called me from birth? Have I ever reflected on His calling for me?

In my life today, how is God calling me to follow and serve Him?

Take confidence in the fact that you have been called from birth by the Lord, and work to let His plans and His presence increase in your life.