Dec 6: It is Forgiveness that Truly Heals

13c. Anonymous French Master: Jesus Heals the Paralytic

Monday of the Second Week of Advent
Gospel: Lk 5:17-26

“But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” —he said to the one who was paralyzed—“I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go to your home (NRSV, Lk 5:24).”

Father, there is little that fills us with wonder more than the physical healings that occur from time to time within our experience: a blind person recovers his sight; a lame person is able to walk again. Even more amazing is when a person’s bodily organ that scientists tells us cannot regenerate itself is suddenly and without explanation made whole again.

Lord, illness, incapacity, disfigurement are all evils that we try so hard to avoid in our lives and to overcome. But strangely enough any of these physical evils can become a truly liberating experience for us. They can be the occasion for us coming to grips with ourselves on the deepest level and changing us for the better. The reason for this, of course, is that physical evils do not really touch us in our being. What truly matters is how we respond to them. The person who becomes totally incapacitated physically and therefore totally dependent upon others for his physical care may for the first time discover the fragility that marks all of human existence and learn for the first time the meaning of gratitude. As difficult as it may seem to accept at initial consideration, all of us can become better persons on account of the physical evils that restrict us in the body.

There is an evil, however, that does touch us in our being, Lord. And that is moral evil, sin. Once we have turned against you, Lord, by misusing our sister or brother, we become truly crippled. We become caught in a trap of our own making and there is nothing that we can do to free ourselves from it. Once caught in the vise of sin we are powerless.

Lord, we are grateful to you for so many things: for life, for the ability to love one another in you. But perhaps your greatest gift to us is forgiveness. When we are caught up in the shackles of our own sins, you offer us freedom from ourselves. There is no payment asked nor can one be accepted. That is because we are powerless to pay. Your gift of forgiveness, because it is gift, is free. All we need do is accept it and allow it to change our lives.

Forgiveness from you, Father, once accepted, inevitably has real effect in our lives. The forgiveness which you offer us and which we need only accept makes us to be new beings who will radiate that same forgiveness, your forgiveness, to those who have sinned against us. Your forgiveness, Father, catches us up ever more fully in the divine life that is you, Father and Son sharing love that is the Holy Spirit.

Alleluia. Amen.