The Power of Faith & Obedience
Friday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time, June 26th, 2026
Scholars through the centuries have noted many differences between the Synoptic tradition, the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and that of the Johannine tradition. One key difference is the application of Jesus’ miracles, or as John’s gospel calls them, signs, which are meant to lead people to faith in Jesus. In the Synoptic tradition, the catalyst for Jesus’ action is the faith of the person who wishes to be healed, or perhaps the faith of the family who wishes it, or mourns the death of a loved one.
In today’s gospel, we find a leper who first pays homage to Jesus—or perhaps we can say, worships Jesus (v.2). But, if just for a moment, you back up a verse, notice how Matthew frames this pericope in verse 1: “When Jesus came down from the mountain.” It is here, after the Sermon on the Mount, that Jesus sits as the new Moses—but also, more, as Matthew’s primary audience are Jews, people who would have understood the imagery deeply. Christ sits down on the mount, on the cathedra of Moses himself, and not only gives the law but breaks into the world the kingdom of heaven by His very condescension, becoming one of us. It is here that we understand the LORD coming to shepherd His own people.
I asked my six-year-old son one day, “Who is Jesus? What did He do?” He simply answered, “He heals people.” Friends, I think that we get too caught up sometimes in the ivory tower notions of Jesus and Christianity. Jesus tells us Himself that to enter the kingdom of heaven, “one must become like children.” (Mt. 18:3) What is the state of children—total dependence on their parents.
Servant of God Nicholas Black Elk puts it this way, “When you have received the sacred sacraments, you are a child of God. When you become God’s children, live the way he wants us to live, to be patient and honest as you can with yourself. In this way, as a child of God, you will go to heaven because you are living as God has instructed you to do.”1
Childlike faith is fully dependent on the LORD. It compels us to obedience. It compels our trust in our LORD, Jesus Christ. Let’s focus on the leper in today’s gospel. The leper comes to Jesus in faith that he will be healed, but Jesus also gives the leper conditions upon this healing: 1. Tell no one. 2. Go and do what the law prescribes. The coming down from the mountain, the condescension of our LORD, is the restoration of God’s divine friendship with humanity. Our LORD, through a cooperation with the gift of faith, trusts us to keep His commandments and thus gives us the means to be healed by faith in Him.
Nicholas Black Elk, A Pastoral Letter by Nick Black Elk in Šinasapa Wocekine Taeyanpaha, undated. Black Elk Letters (Marquette University, Raynor Library, Archival Collections and Institutional Repository, 2019) https://www.rapidcitydiocese.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/1907-4-21.pdf