RETREAT IN LENT 2021

Day 20, Monday, 8 March 

Naaman and the little girl

Jesus reminds his hearers in the synagogue in Capernaum that the pagan Syrian listened to Elisha the prophet and was healed (2 Kings 5:1-15), whereas they do not welcome his message (Luke 4:24-30). They are enraged and want to throw him off the edge of the cliff near their town. What strikes me about this story is how the Syrians listen to a little captive girl.

She is a child. She is a girl and she is a captive. All these would surely, in the culture of the time, make her someone not worth listening to. But, not only does the king heed her, he sends Naaman loaded with gifts to Israel to be cured. What power that little girl had! Perhaps it reminds us of Bernadette of Lourdes who insisted, against all the ‘wise’ objections of her elders that she had seen the lady at the grotto and that she had given those instructions.

Naaman becomes sceptical when Elisha tells him to bathe in the River Jordan. ‘Surely the rivers of Damascus are better than any rivers in Israel?’ But again, he listens to an unusual source, this time his servants, and goes and does what the prophet commands and his flesh is cleansed and becomes ‘like the flesh of little child’.

‘Unless you become like little children …’ (Matt 18:3). Naaman, the successful army commander, seems to become a little child in this story.

Jesus is asking the people pf Capernaum to drop their prejudices and comfortable arguments and accept the gift God is offering (John 4:10) in humble faith. It means putting to one side all the images we build of ourselves and allowing him to come to us and change us.