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Healing of Peter's mother-in-law

Matt 8:14–15; Mark 1:29–31; Luke 4:38–39 · Early ministry in Galilee

Scripture

Matthew 8:14–15

nd when Jesus was come into Peter’s house, he saw his wife’s mother laid, and sick of a fever. 15And he touched her hand, and the fever left her: and she arose, and ministered unto them.

King James Version · public domain

Mateu 8:14–15

dhe Jisuj kur erdhi ndë shtëpit të Pjetrit, pa të vjehërrën’ e ati që po dergjej ndër ethe. 15Edhe e zuri atë prej dore, edhe e lanë ethetë; edhe ajo ungrit e u shërbente atyre.

Kristoforidhi, Dhiata e Re Toskërisht 1879 · zotërim publik

Summary

A brief healing on which the Fathers dwell with care. The first thing they draw out is the completeness and immediacy of the cure. There is no convalescence and no lingering weakness: the fever does not merely subside but departs all at once, and full strength returns in the same moment, so that she rises and serves. Ordinary recovery leaves a body spent and feeble; here the One who made the body restores it whole, which is itself a sign of who He is.

The Evangelists describe the manner of the healing variously, and the tradition gathers these together. Matthew and Mark tell that Christ took her by the hand and raised her up; Luke says that He stood over her and rebuked the fever. St. Cyril of Alexandria draws out the force of that word rebuked: Christ addresses the fever as He addresses the demons, with the authority of a Master over what afflicts His creation, and the sickness obeys His voice as the unclean spirits do. Touch and word alike carry divine power, for it is God who commands and the same God who lays His hand on our weakness.

That she "rose and served them" the Fathers take as the proper fruit of being healed. Christ does not restore us to idleness but to ministry; the healed life is a serving life. St. Ambrose reads the scene inwardly as well: Christ enters the house, which is the soul, and the fever of greed, of anger, of the lusts of the flesh gives way at His touch. The soul freed from the burning of the passions does not rest in itself but rises at once to the service of God and neighbor, which is the health to which all healing is meant to lead.

The Healing of Peter's Mother-in-Law (Matthew 8:14–15; Mark 1:29–31; Luke 4:38–39)

Public-Domain Patristic Commentary

Immediately after leaving the synagogue, Christ enters Simon Peter's house and heals his wife's mother of a fever, and she rises to serve. The texts below are quoted verbatim from public-domain English translations. Cyril is taken from his own commentary; the others are taken from the public-domain Catena Aurea (St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. J. H. Newman, 1841; Oxford, 1874), whose attributions for Matthew draw on the Fathers' extant commentaries. Each section gives the source and a link. Nothing here is paraphrased.

St. Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376–444)

Commentary on the Gospel of Luke, Sermon XII (on Luke 4:38–39) Source: trans. R. Payne Smith, Library of Fathers, 1859. Public domain. Full text: https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/cyril_on_luke_02_sermons_12_25.htm

On Christ lodging with a poor disciple:

Observe therefore how He Who endured voluntary poverty for our sakes, that we by His poverty might become rich, lodged with one of His disciples, a man poor, and living in obscurity, that we might learn to seek the company of the humble, and not to boast ourselves over those in want and affliction.

On the fever rebuked, as though it were a living thing (Luke's distinctive phrasing):

Jesus arrives at Simon's house, and finds his wife's mother sick of a fever: and He stood, and rebuked the fever, and it left her. Now in what is said by Matthew and Mark, that "the fever left her," there is no hint of any living thing as the active cause of the fever: but in Luke's phrase that "He stood over her, and rebuked the fever, and it left her," I do not know whether we are not compelled to say that that which was rebuked was some living thing unable to sustain the influence of Him Who rebuked it: for it is not reasonable to rebuke a thing without life, and unconscious of the rebuke.

On the touch of His flesh, and the soul that receives Him (Luke 4:39):

He entered, then, into Peter's house, where a woman was lying stretched upon a bed, exhausted with a violent fever: and when He might as God have said, "Put away the disease, arise," He adopted a different course of action. For, as a proof that His own flesh possessed the power of healing, as being the flesh of God, He touched her hand, and forthwith, it says, the fever left her. Let us, therefore, also receive Jesus: for when He has entered into us, and we have received Him into mind and heart, then He will quench the fever of unbefitting pleasures, and raise us up, and make us strong, even in things spiritual, so as for us to minister unto Him, by performing those things that please Him.

On the power of His holy flesh:

But observe again, I pray, how great is the efficacy of the touch of His holy flesh. For it ... overthrows the power of the devil, and heals a very great multitude of people in one moment of time. And though able to perform these miracles by a word and the inclination of His will, yet to teach us something useful for us, He also lays His hands upon the sick.

St. John Chrysostom (c. 347–407)

Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, Homily XXVII (on Matthew 8:14–15) Source: as preserved in the Catena Aurea, trans. J. H. Newman et al., Oxford: Parker, 1874. Public domain. (Chrysostom's Homilies on Matthew are also in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 10.) Catena Aurea (public domain): https://archive.org/details/p1catenaaureacom01thomuoft

On why He entered the house, and Peter's reverence:

Why did He enter into Peter's house? I think to take food; for it follows, And she arose, and ministered to them. For He abode with His disciples to do them honour, and to make them more zealous. Observe Peter's reverence towards Christ; though his mother-in-law lay at home sick of a fever, yet he did not force Him thither at once, but waited till His teaching should be completed, and others healed. For from the beginning he was instructed to prefer others to himself. Wherefore he did not even bring Him thither, but Christ went in of Himself. And He did not scorn to enter the humble hut of a fisherman, instructing us in everything to trample upon human pride.

On the touch and the completeness of the cure:

Sometimes He heals by a word, sometimes He reaches forth His hand; as here, He touched her hand, and the fever left her. For He would not always work miracles with display of surpassing power, but would sometimes be hid. By touching her body He not only banished the fever, but restored her to perfect health. Because her sickness was such as art could cure, He showed his power to heal, in doing what medicine could not do, giving her back perfect health and strength at once; which is intimated in what the Evangelist adds, And she arose, and ministered to them.

On her service:

This, she arose and ministered unto them, shows at once the Lord's power, and the woman's feeling towards Christ.

Briefer readings (from the Catena Aurea, public domain)

St. Jerome (c. 347–420), Commentary on Matthew, on the completeness of the cure:

For naturally the greatest weakness follows fever, and the evils of sickness begin to be felt as the patient begins to recover; but that health which is given by the Lord's power is complete at once.

St. Bede the Venerable (c. 673–735) and St. Remigius of Auxerre (c. 841–908), from the Catena Aurea, reading the healing as a figure of the synagogue restored:

Figuratively; Peter's house is the Law, or the circumcision, his mother-in-law the synagogue, which is as it were the mother of the Church committed to Peter. She is in a fever, that is, she is sick of zealous hate, and persecutes the Church ... But when the Lord through the mystery of the Incarnation appeared visibly in the synagogue, and fulfilled the Law in action, and taught that it was to be understood spiritually; straightway it thus allied with the grace of the Gospel received such strength, that what had been the minister of death and punishment, became the minister of life and glory.

St. Hilary of Poitiers (c. 310–367)

From his Commentary on Matthew, as preserved in the Catena Aurea on Matthew. Public domain.

On the cure of unbelief when the Lord enters the body:

In Peter's wife's mother is shewn the sickly condition of infidelity, to which freedom of will is near akin, being united by the bonds as it were of wedlock. By the Lord's entrance into Peter's house, that is into the body, unbelief is cured, which was before sick of the fever of sin, and ministers in duties of righteousness to the Saviour.

Blessed Augustine (i Hiponit) (354–430)

From his De Consensu Evangelistarum (On the Harmony of the Evangelists), II, 21, as preserved in the Catena Aurea on Matthew. Public domain.

On why Matthew gives no fixed time for the miracle:

When this miracle was done, that is, after what, or before what, Matthew has not said. For we need not understand that it took place just after that which it follows in the relation; he may be returning here to what he had omitted above.

On the order of the Evangelists' narratives:

But what matters it in what order the events are told, whether something omitted before is brought in after, or what was done after is told earlier, so long as in the same story he does not contradict either another or himself? ... Therefore when the order of time is not clear, it cannot import to us what order of relation any one of them may have followed.

Note on other Fathers

The Catena Aurea on this passage also preserves figurative readings by Anselm, Remigius, and Rabanus Maurus, and a brief glossarial note, which are not reproduced here. St. Ambrose of Milan treats this healing in his Exposition of the Gospel of Luke (Book IV), reading the fever as the heat of the passions which Christ cools by His coming; his Latin is public domain, but the complete English translation is modern and under copyright. The excerpts above are given from the public-domain Catena Aurea because the search did not surface a clean link to the primary editions of Hilary and Ambrose; Chrysostom's full Homily 27 on Matthew is itself public domain in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers and can be substituted for the Catena text.

Patristic sources