Monday of the Fourteenth Week C-2

Psalm 54 (47): 10‑11 Your merciful love, O God, we have received in the midst of your temple. Your praise, O God, like your name, reaches the ends of the earth; your right hand is filled with saving justice.

Prayer today: O God, who in the abasement of your Son have raised up a fallen world, fill your faithful with holy joy, for on those you have rescued from slavery to sin you bestow eternal gladness. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Scripture today: Wisdom 2:1.12-22; Psalm 33; John 7:1-2.10.25-30

While Jesus was saying this, a ruler came and knelt before him and said, My daughter has just died. But come and put your hand on her, and she will live. Jesus got up and went with him, and so did his disciples. Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed. Jesus turned and saw her. Take heart, daughter, he said, your faith has healed you. And the woman was healed from that moment. When Jesus entered the ruler's house and saw the flute players and the noisy crowd, he said, Go away. The girl is not dead but asleep. But they laughed at him. After the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took the girl by the hand, and she got up. News of this spread through all that region. (Matthew 9:18-26)

Objective Truth There are so many things in life that are a source of wonder, and yet we barely give them a thought. This is one of the reasons why poetry can be said to be “useful,” because it helps us to appreciate and marvel at things which we so easily take for granted. We take love for granted so very often. We take beautiful scenery for granted — and Wordsworth’s poetry extolling beautiful scenes can help us recapture our appreciation of the beauty of the world. One thing which we routinely take for granted without much reflection is the fact that we can know things. What is it to know the truth of something? Knowledge, involving both apprehension and judgment, is difficult to define, but it is a remarkable thing. It is quite different from mere awareness which, say, an animal has — though this awareness is remarkable too, especially if we remember that there is nothing spiritual about the animal. Inasmuch as an animal is purely material, matter has the potential for awareness, but not for “knowledge of the truth” as possessed by the human being. I make these passing observations simply to introduce the phenomenon of human knowledge. How vast is the range of human knowledge! Consider the libraries of the world and the civilizations of man — they are a tribute to knowledge of the truth. Now, let us take our Gospel scene today (Matthew 9: 18-26) and consider the two persons who approached our Lord to gain his assistance. We read that “a ruler came and knelt before him and said, My daughter has just died. But come and put your hand on her, and she will live.” There were two things the ruler knew. He knew that his daughter had died, and he knew that if our Lord placed his hand on her, she would live. Both were things he knew. The former he had seen, the latter he believed, but both he knew. The former he knew because of the hard evidence before him of his dead child. The latter, that Christ would raise her up at his touch, he knew because of his faith in Christ’s power.

Faith, then, is a form of certain knowledge which is different from knowledge based on direct observation of hard evidence. The ruler knew our Lord could raise up his daughter because he trusted him completely. This trust was based on very good reasons such as general testimony and even what he may himself have seen our Lord do, but in the last analysis it was a matter of trust. He was not trusting anyone in the matter of the death of his beloved daughter. He had seen that for himself. His faith in Jesus Christ, was, though, knowledge of the truth. It was not, say, just a feeling. Religious faith is not just a religious feeling. It is knowledge of the truth. Or take the second personage who features in our Gospel, the woman who had long been ill. We read that “Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed. Jesus turned and saw her.” There were two things, we might say, this woman had a certain knowledge of. She knew that she had been ill with her terrible complaint for twelve years. She knew this on the basis of her direct observation of the hard evidence. There was something else she had a certain knowledge of, and it was that if she but touched the garment of Jesus, she would be healed. This was a truth she knew for certain, and was just as certain as she was of her sickness itself. But her knowledge of Christ’s ready and complete power was based on faith. Her faith was not just a feeling she had. It was true knowledge of the active power of God present in this man Jesus. She had strong feelings about it, but in the first instance her faith involved knowledge of the truth. Because she had come to know — for good reasons — that Jesus could and would save her, she was healed. “Jesus turned and saw her. Take heart, daughter, he said, your faith has healed you. And the woman was healed.” In the house, the mourners laughed at our Lord — and were put out. The ruler believed, and was rewarded by the gift of his daughter back to life.

The gift of faith is indeed a gift from on high. There are excellent objective reasons for the faith we have in Jesus Christ, but God’s assistance is needed for us to perceive the true and full import of those good grounds that are before us. When Simon Peter professed his faith in our Lord as the Messiah and Son of the Living God, Christ told him that this had been revealed to him by the Father. Simon did not simply have a religious feeling about it. He had sure and certain knowledge of Christ, which others who did not have faith lacked. Our Christian faith gives us real knowledge of great Realities. The objective Truth constitutes religion, and that Truth is Christ.

(E.J.Tyler)

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