On World Day of prayer for the Sick, (11thFeb.), Pope Benedict emphasised the “sacraments of healing”, - Penance and the Anointing of the Sick. We might wonder what the sacrament of Reconciliation has to do with the healing of a disease or a disability, but Pope Benedict is keen that we do not seperate physical and spiritual healing if we are to live as whole people. Nowhere in the New Testament are the two themes of forgiveness and healing brought together more dramatically than in today’s gospel lesson.
Four friends bring a paralytic on a stretcher to see Jesus, but such are the crowds outside Jesus’ home that the only way they can get to see him is by climbing up onto the roof and lowering the stretcher through an opening. Impressed by their faith, Jesus tells the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven.” The four friends must frankly have felt disappointed, the paralytic even more so. They had come for a cure, not forgiveness. The Scribes meanwhile muttered under their breath. Who did Jesus think he was? Only God could grant forgiveness of sins.
Knowing what his critics are thinking Jesus turns on them and asks, “Which is easier to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk’? If Jesus simply tells the man to walk he will be a miracle worker, but if he pronounces the man ‘forgiven’ he has done something much bigger, he has brought about spiritual and physical wholeness. This is what Jesus’ ministry is all about. Next Jesus turns back to the paralytic and provides the miracle cure the crowds are all waiting for.
Yet again we are reminded that healing was never offered for the sake of healing alone. Yet again we are reminded that God made us multi dimensional … a complex mix of the physical, the intellectual, the emotional and the spiritual.
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