“LORD, I AM NOT worthy that you should enter under my roof, but say the word and my soul shall be healed.” (Mt. 8:8) These words, first spoken by the Roman centurion, now echo throughout history in our communal plea before the Lord at every Mass as we prepare to receive Holy Communion. The Church gives us this prayer in the liturgy and invites us to express with our words what is to be cultivated in our hearts. Like the Roman official, we desire to approach the Lord with humble confidence.
Humility means recognizing ourselves truthfully before God, acknowledging our weaknesses, poverty and sinfulness. Yet confidence assures us that these limitations are not obstacles for God’s grace or diminish His desire to draw near to us. In the encounter with the Roman centurion, Jesus reveals that He is not limited by our human frailty nor is He impressed with our own projected standards of progress in the spiritual life. Instead, Jesus shows us that He greatly desires to be with us in our greatest vulnerabilities and His Heart is moved by a trustful petition for mercy. His response to such a plea is to come into these broken realities with His healing and redeeming love.
Still, we have all struggled with a felt sense of unworthiness when we encounter the Lord’s call to come to Him and receive from Him. The centurion’s example in the Gospel teaches us not to give in to the temptation to withdraw or hide from the Lord when we feel unworthy. Like the centurion, we are invited to face Jesus and declare our need in the midst of our unworthiness. God’s love is a wonderful and pure gift freely poured out upon us, flowing from His generous Heart and offered to us without any claim or merit on our part. The centurion’s experience shows us that Jesus carries the power to heal and His Heart is moved by our trustful petition for His word to accomplish what we cannot do on our own.
In the spiritual classic, “I Believe in Love,” Father Jean C.J. d’Elbee offers this observation: “Jesus was so delighted by the centurion’s words that he willed them to be fixed in the Liturgy of the Mass, to be forever the most perfect preparation for Communion.”
So, when we humbly proclaim this prayer during Mass, we are confidently asking Jesus to enter under our roof and into our souls with His healing love. Instead of focusing only on our unworthiness, we are invited to focus more on Jesus’ joy in being asked to come into our souls. The centurion acknowledged his unworthiness but did not make it an obstacle for the Lord to reach him. He offered a humble act of faith and focused on who Jesus is, whose word carries power to heal and whose Heart is delighted to be asked for mercy.
When we pray the words of the centurion at every Mass, we too are capable of delighting the Lord’s Heart with our humble faith. Fr. d’Elbee remarks, “I can imagine the centurion in Heaven, enjoying the unspeakable glory and beatitude of hearing these words, which came from his heart, repeated at the moment when Jesus is received in the Host by all priests and all communicants, in all the Masses which are celebrated in the entire world until the end of time. What a Heaven for him! Because he recognized his own unworthiness, and he believed.”
This vision shows how one simple act of trust can resonate in the Heart of Jesus and echo throughout eternity, encouraging us to offer the same faith each time we approach the Lord. As we imagine the centurion rejoicing in Heaven each time his words are spoken, we are reminded that our own struggle with unworthiness is not a barrier but the very place where Jesus longs to meet us. In this humble prayer, we find the courage to believe that His word can heal us as we approach Him in Holy Communion. We cannot heal ourselves or make ourselves worthy; it is Jesus who speaks His word over us and gives us His own worthiness.