Jesus Heals an Official’s Son

When the official came before Jesus and asked him to return to Capernaum to heal his son, was he alone? John’s Gospel does not mention anyone accompanying the official at that moment. It is only later, while the official is on his way home that he meets his servants who inform him that his son has been healed (4:51–52).  

Anton Wierix, a sixteenth-century Flemish artist, was part of a family that produced thousands of engravings. This print was created during a time when images and text were being combined in new ways to ‘create an effect more powerful than that of either single component’ (Stronks 210: 220). The pairing of words with images allowed biblical subject matter to be communicated with an impact that neither the textual nor the visual could achieve on its own.

After 1626, Wierix’s engravings and many others were adapted into book form and accompanied with text, identified with the alphabetic letters, to aid in the interpretation of various biblical scenes (Enenkel 2018: 227).

Wierix’s engraving captures the entire episode in a single image, allowing us visually to identify the cities, people, dialogue, and plot. Further away in the background of the composition is the conclusion of this story where the royal official meets his servants who inform him of his son’s recovery.

Although John’s Gospel does not mention any entourage, Wierix’s depiction shows the official with a multitude of servants and his cavalry. They are dressed in fine clothing and convey a sense of authority. The royal official has a sword visible on his hip. The presence of these figures standing behind the royal official highlights the contrast between his authority to command and Jesus’s divine authority to heal.

Though the royal official holds the sword, it is really Jesus who has the power over life and death.

References

Enenkel, Karl A.E., and Christine Göttler. 2018. Solitudo: Spaces, Places, and Times of Solitude in Late Medieval and Early Modern Cultures (Leiden: Brill)

Stronks, Els. 2010. ‘Literature and the Shaping of Religious Identities: The Case of the Protestant Religious Emblem in the Dutch Republic’, History of Religions 49.3: 219–53

As Jesus travelled from town to town, we do not know how many were in need of a miracle. We are left to wonder about those he might have passed by as well as those he engaged with; those who go unrecorded in the Gospels as well as those whose healings are narrated.  

One possible scenario is depicted by Rodolpho Amoêdo, a Brazilian artist of the late nineteenth century, in a painting entitled Jesus em Cafarnaum, completed at the Julian Academy in Paris (1885). Known for his ‘soft and misty’ style of colouration, Amoêdo blurs most of the faces in the scene, except for the man who is lying on the crowded pathway (Braz-Botelho 2015: 37). Amoêdo’s painting foregrounds this young man, his head turned away from Jesus. A woman, perhaps his mother, kneels behind him, extending her arm toward Jesus in an attempt to draw attention to her son.

At the corner of the street, two men stand together, holding each other with a sense of anticipation, as though hoping that Jesus will walk by and see their need.

Was it on one of his visits to Capernaum (e.g. John 2:12), on a street like this one, that Jesus was first seen by the official who would later approach him? We cannot be sure.

Nonetheless, the man on the ground and the people around him are depicted with the greatest clarity and emphasis. The painting presents a poignant scene of the afflicted, with their families the only ones able to plead on their behalf.

Jesus descends some stairs in the narrow street, but it is unclear where his focus is directed. He appears not to be paying attention to the person kneeling immediately in front of him and grasping his arm, and it is uncertain whether he has noticed the young man who lies further ahead of him.

Amoêdo’s painting deliberately blurs Jesus’s face, creating ambiguity about whether Jesus is approaching the young man or about to walk past him. We are left more certain of the intentions of those who are petitioning him than of his own.

References

Braz-Botelho, Marilia. 2015. Le peintre brésilien Rodolpho Amoêdo (1857–1941) et l’expérience de la peinture française: académisme ou innovation? (Unpublished PhD thesis, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne-Paris)

‘Your son will live’ (John 4:50). These words of Jesus brought profound comfort to a deeply distressed father.

In the Gospel account, the father (an ‘official’) has travelled from Capernaum to Cana upon hearing that Jesus has recently arrived there. When he finds Jesus, he urgently begs Him to come and heal his dying son. Instead of going with him, Jesus sends the father away and simply affirms that his son will live. The father believed in Jesus’s words, and immediately departed home.

Although John’s Gospel provides few details about the father’s arrival at his home, this illumination imagines the scene. It is from a life of Christ by Jerome Xavier, a Spanish Jesuit missionary to the Mughal court of the Emperor Akbar (sixteenth–seventeenth centuries). The Emperor had a deep interest in Christianity and hosted Xavier as a guest (Carvalho 2012: 1). He commissioned from Xavier a manuscript about Christ called MirʼāT Al-Quds (Mirror of Holiness) and this illumination comes from one of three extant illustrated copies (ibid).

The illumination portrays the father at his home, watching over his son who is lying on the floor. The mother is also nearby, gently gazing at her son with an outstretched arm, as if to comfort him.

Downstairs, on the ground floor of the home, several servants remain busy with household tasks. They may not be aware of the full extent of the son’s miraculous recovery, but they are eager to serve (Carvalho 2012: 108–09). The painting also features a woman at the door, ready to receive another visitor.

While the Gospel story does not detail the scene at the father’s home, this painting visually depicts the overwhelming relief and astonishment of the moment. This miracle, performed by Jesus from a distance, was understood only by the father, who realized that his son’s recovery was due to Jesus’s pronouncement that he would live.

However, the most striking elements of the portrait are the angels just discernible within the arches supporting the roof of the home. These hidden angels evoke a sense of the unseen heavenly presence of God. In some sense, they also reflect the hidden nature of Jesus’s miracle. But as viewers of this artwork, we, like the readers of John’s Gospel, are given privileged access to what only the father knew at the time: that God was powerfully at work in this healing miracle.

References

Carvalho, Pedro de Moura, and W. M. Thackston. 2012. MirʼāT Al-Quds : A Life of Christ for Emperor Akbar (Leiden: Brill)