Pick up your bed and go home
Hebrews 4:1-5,11
Mark 2:1-12
In today's gospel we are told that: seeing their faith Jesus told the paralyzed man “Child your sins are forgiven." This tells us that to him being freed from sin is a much more important thing than the cure from paralysis. We remember that he told another paralytic whom he cured, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you” (John 5:14). Surely this is not why the four men went to all that trouble of digging a hole in someone's roof, to get their friend's sins forgiven? We generally tend to see things differently from Jesus.
The forgiveness of sins is not only a much more important form of healing than the cure of physical incapacity according to the mind of Jesus, but also a much harder thing as we gather from his question to the Pharisees: "Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, pick up your mat and walk’?" Evidently for him forgiveness is a harder thing, and he healed the man from paralysis to show them that the Son of Man had authority on earth. It is not difficult for us to figure out why that is so. He through whom God commanded: "let there be light and there was light," had to suffer and to die in order that our sins may be forgiven. His blood is the blood of the new and everlasting covenant shed so that sins may be forgiven. God who created and sustains all being with his powerful command cannot forgive the creatures he has endowed with freedom without their consent.
Whereas God does not always take away our physical ailments when we ask him, he never denies us forgiveness when we repent of our sins and come to him in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. And yet while people go to great pains to get rid of physical ailments and sometimes to no avail, they frequently neglect to ask God to forgive their sins in the sacrament he has established for that. Today's gospel reflection invites us to ask ourselves when we last received the Sacrament of Reconciliation and whether it is not time to seek God's forgiveness again.
