'Unless you see signs and wonders, you do not believe' – Healing the Nobleman's Son
Why does Our Lord seem to rebuke this man for asking him to come and heal his dying son—especially when at other times, he is willing to do just that?
In this chapter…
The context of this early miracle—Our Lord returning to Galilee after conflict in Jerusalem
Our Lord’s surprisingly different treatment of persons according to their needs
How the spread of faith is based on miracles
See also:
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The Healing of the Nobleman’s Son
From
The Ministry of St. John the Baptist
Fr Henry James Coleridge, 1886, Ch. XXV, pp 340-347
St. John iv, 43-54; Story of the Gospels, § 27
(Read at Holy Mass on the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost)
Our Lord’s return to Galilee
St. John tells us that after His stay of two days in the city of Sychar,1 our Lord proceeded on His journey to Galilee, which He was now to make for some time the chief scene of His labours for the good of souls.
This return to Galilee, the immediate reason for which is given in a former section, appears also to have coincided in time with the arrest of St. John Baptist by the licentious King, Herod Antipas. We shall speak of this in the concluding chapters of this volume.
The Evangelist adds to his statement concerning our Lord's return into Galilee, the words—‘For Jesus Himself bare witness that a prophet hath no honour in his own country.’ This can be nothing but an allusion to the scene in the synagogue of Nazareth, in which our Lord did actually both in word and in deed bear witness to this law in the providence of God, as we find it related in St. Luke. [See the Note below.]
This prepares us to find, in the narrative which follows, an illustration and, perhaps, a further explanation, of something which is contained in what St. Luke has there related.
Welcomed by the Galilaeans
‘When then,’ as has been said, ‘our Lord was come into Galilee, the Galilaeans welcomed Him, because they had seen all the things which He had done at Jerusalem on the feast-day, for they also had gone up to the feast.’ It had been said, as we shall see, by other Evangelists, that our Lord’s fame was already spread abroad when He arrived in Galilee, and St. John now mentions how it came to be so.
There had not been a sufficient interval of time for them to forget the act of authority and zeal with which He had purged the Temple, the bold attitude which He had assumed towards the priests and rulers of the Temple, and the many miracles which had produced so much effect upon the mind of a learned man like Nicodemus. The minds of people were still full of Him, and thus it was that He found so ready a reception on His appearance in Galilee.
He first directed His steps to Cana, ‘where,’ as St. John says, ‘He had made the water wine,’ perhaps because His Blessed Mother was again there, as she had been after His first absence from her at the time of His Baptism and Temptation. Cana was further than Nazareth from Sychar, but nearer to Capharnaum, and if our Blessed Lady had returned to her relatives there from Capharnaum during our Lord’s absence, this would explain why He passed by His native city in order to join her. At all events, His return into Galilee and His presence at Cana was quickly known.
The nobleman at Capharnaum
A person of high rank at Capharnaum, holding some position of importance, as it seems, at the court of Herod Antipas, had heard of our Lord from some of the numerous inhabitants of the place who had lately been at Jerusalem. He may himself have been at the feast.
His son was dangerously ill of a fever at Capharnaum, and when the news came that the new Prophet and Wonder-worker was once again at Cana, the scene of His first great miracle a few weeks before this time, his own anxiety for his child and the faith of those about him suggested that our Lord should be asked to come and heal the sick lad. It was a journey of several hours, but he did not hesitate to leave the child to the care of others, though he was apparently on the point of death, and go himself to beg that our Lord would come.
He poured out his tale and his entreaties, but at first received what seemed to be a check.
It was our Lord’s way, by the use of what in His children is called the gift of counsel, to meet each case of those who addressed themselves to Him, or to whom He addressed Himself, in the manner which was most perfectly suitable to draw them on to higher things when they had begun well, or to detach them from errors or faults if they were in a state which needed such help.
He had begun with the Samaritan woman by asking of her a favour, and so putting Himself in the humble position of a suppliant to her. To this man of rank and birth, who had so far overcome the prejudices and haughtiness which infect such positions as his, our Lord replied in a manner to put his faith to a test by means of which it might be elevated and perfected.
Why should He come down all the way from Cana to Capharnaum? Was there no other way by which He might work the miraculous cure which was asked of Him? Could not He do it where He was? And could not the father take His word for it, that all was well?
‘Except you see signs’
‘Jesus, therefore, said to him, Except you see signs and wonders, you do not believe!’ You require, then, that I should be on the spot, and that you should be present also to see Me do what you ask? Is not My word enough? Can you not believe without seeing?
‘The nobleman said to Him, Lord, come down before my son die!’ He was still not perfect in faith, but he did not answer our Lord’s question in the negative. He had a strong wish in his heart, for the accomplishment of which he had put himself to great pains, and had even left the son whom he loved so tenderly when there was all human probability that he might never again see him alive.
So he insisted on his prayer, which our Lord answered in a better way than he had hoped, at the same time requiring of him a special act of faith and submission to the will of God as to the manner in which his desire was to be carried out. ‘Jesus saith to him. Go, thy son liveth.’ No need for a long and anxious journey, straining ourselves to arrive in time before the child is brought to the last gasp: the work is done at this moment—'Go thy way!’
At the same moment, two wonderful acts of mercy and power, very different in kind, were performed by our Lord. The watchers by the bedside of the dying boy saw a sudden change, and fever left him entirely. And the father’s faith was so strengthened and enlarged, that he had no difficulty in at once believing our Lord’s words and taking his departure on his homeward journey, rejoicing.
As soon as the cure was ascertained, some of the household started on the road to Cana to carry the news to him. They met him on the way, and when he asked them at what exact time the change had taken place, he found that it was at the same moment at which our Lord had said to him, ‘Thy son liveth.’ ‘Yesterday, at the seventh hour, the fever left him.’
Faith of the nobleman
‘And he himself believed and his whole house.’ There was a richness and readiness of faith in the opening period of our Lord's teaching which faded away as time went on, and people became more familiar, at once with our Lord's miracles, and with the objections and calumnies which were circulated against them.
The Samaritans, who believed on His mere word, the Galileans, who welcomed Him so honourably after having seen His works at Jerusalem, and even the nobleman at Capharnaum, who was required to believe in signs and wonders without seeing them, seem to inherit the generous and simple faith which is so conspicuous in the shepherds and Eastern sages who came to honour our Lord in the cradle at Bethlehem.
We have also a glimpse of the religious union between the nobleman and his servants—their eagerness to bear the good tidings to him, and to follow him in the profession which he now made of belief in our Blessed Lord.
Spread of faith at Capharnaum
Nor, again, can we help noticing the manner in which, among the better classes of society in Capharnaum, the contagion of faith spread from one to another; for the faith of the centurion, who a year after this time thought it too much trouble to put our Lord to that He should be asked to come and heal his servant, but sent Him the message, ‘Speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed,’ seems to be the echo of the faith which our Lord had required of the nobleman.
There were, we have seen, many in Capharnaum who had seen our Lord's miracles at Jerusalem at the feast, and others who had heard of them: our Lord had already spent some few days in the busy little city.
There was Matthew, sitting still at the receipt of custom, but his heart gradually preparing for the call which was to turn him from a publican into an Apostle and Evangelist; there was Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, and probably many other families in which the good seed was already sown. The fields were white unto the harvest; but before our Lord began to make Capharnaum His residence, and the scene of so many miracles and of so much holy teaching, He had, according to the rule of God's providence and the guidance of His Father's will in His own particular case, to receive a great and, as it would seem to human eye, a dangerous humiliation at the hands of people who ought to have been far more ready to receive His word than the inhabitants of Capharnaum. mentions the departure from Judaea.
It is the departure from Judaea, not the return to Galilee, which in that case would be the witness. Again, we do not find that any place but Nazareth was called our Lord's own country, and we have also our Lord's own words as recorded by St. Luke, not to speak of other places, in which He applies the proverb to Nazareth. We are therefore entirely justified in rejecting as impossible the application to Judaea.
Note VIII: On the Meaning of St. John iv. 44
It remains to explain St. John's language, for if the words refer to the rejection at Nazareth, it seems at first sight strange that he should give that as the reason for our Lord's return into Galilee. And yet it is entirely in harmony with St. John's method throughout his Gospel that he should do so.
To explain that fully would belong more properly to that part of the present work in which it is professedly treated of, but it may be well to mention here what may be sufficient for the understanding of the present difficulty.
St. John throughout his Gospel constantly refers to what he supposes to be already known to his readers from other Gospels, and particularly from that of St. Luke, and it is frequently his object to supply some piece of information which may be useful in order to the full understanding of what has been said before him, sometimes even to prevent a false impression as to facts.
His method is to introduce these supplementary narratives by some particle such as γὰρ or οῦν, which refers, not to what immediately precedes in his own narrative, but to what is already known to his readers. The most obvious instances of this method are to be found in his narrative of the Passion, as will be seen when that narrative is considered in relation to those of the three other Evangelists.2 The word ‘for’ or ‘therefore’ in such places means, what we should express by some such words as ‘as you know.’
Thus in this place his meaning is, Jesus went into Galilee, for, as you have been told, He Himself had to bear witness to the truth that a prophet is without honour in his own country. That is, He went to Nazareth and was rejected there. Then follows what has been here called a supplementary narrative, inasmuch as it not only supplies a fact which had been omitted by others, and particularly by that Evangelist who had related our Lord's rejection by the Nazarenes, but also explains something in what St. Luke has related which needs explanation.
That something is to be found in the words of our Lord in the synagogue—‘You will no doubt say to Me that parable, Physician, heal Thyself; those great things which we have heard done in Capharnaum, do here in thine own country.’ Now, there is nothing in the narrative of St. Luke, nothing in that of St. Matthew or in that of St. Mark, which tells us of any mighty works wrought in Capharnaum before this time.
St. John therefore subjoins the account of the miracle of the healing of the nobleman's son which was accomplished at Capharnaum by our Lord when at Cana, and which must have made a great stir, inasmuch as it was followed by the conversion of the nobleman and his whole family, and may very well have been spread over the country from a central point like Capharnaum, so as to be fresh in the minds of the people of Nazareth on the Sabbath day on which His rejection took place.
It is, indeed, the earliest instance in which it is distinctly recorded that our Lord exercised His power in healing diseases, although we cannot doubt that most of the miracles which He had wrought at Jerusalem at the feast were miracles of healing, and the narrative here given by St. John explains at once the outburst of petty local jealousy in the Nazarenes, and the fury to which they were moved when our Lord told them that He was not going to work miracles in His own city.
From Fr Henry James Coleridge, The Ministry of St. John the Baptist
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Sychar, the name used by St. John for Sichem, is thought to be a sort of nickname, a corruption of the original. But this is very uncertain.
The students of St. John's Gospel may perhaps be helped if we name a few of the passages in which this principle is exemplified. Such will be found in c. v. 16; xi. 2; xii. 1, 3; xiii. 1; xviii. 3, 28; xix. 1, 6, 21, 24, 28, 30, 31.