Jan 14: God's Life Brings Healing

Anonymous Netherlander: The Healing of the Paralytic
Chester Dale Collection
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1560-90

Friday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

Gospel: Mk 2:1-12

“But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,” he said to the paralytic, “I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home (NRSV, Mk 2:10-11).”

Father, There are times when, like the repentant prodigal son, we turn to you to beg for forgiveness, but, you, who seemed absent as we turned away from you in our selfishness, were already there offering yourself to us. Your Word, apparently withdrawn but only because of our sinful blindness, is always there offering life and forgiveness if only we would accept it and live it out.

Your life offered over and over again, in every moment, never rescues us from the chaos of our sins. Rather it calls us forth out of the sinful situation by empowering us to turn away from the sin that we had chosen and, newly transformed, to move forward once again towards you who are our true future.

And your life, Father, brings such strength to all who will accept it gratefully and make it their own. By the power that becomes theirs the blind have been know to see. The lame have walked again. The paralyzed have picked up their mats and carried them. Diseased vital organs have been restored. Others have moved forward still bearing their illness but now, maybe for the first time, they have understood, with gratitude, their radical dependence upon you, Lord, and gone out in thankful love to those who care for them. All of us appropriate your gift of life in ways suitable to who we are, each one of us.

And there is much more, Lord. All of us who continue to accept the gift of your life in the Spirit ready ourselves more and more to face inevitable physical death, not as undoing and defeat, but as passage to a still fuller life with you. Just as you never rescue us from our own sinfulness or from any of life’s difficulties but always offer us the life and power to transform those situations into victory, so your life does not rescue us from death. Rather it empowers us that we can face death as an hour of glory as Jesus did.

Father, in this moment, may I accept the further gift of your life that I may be healed of my sins and of everything that separates me from you. May I share this healing with all of my sisters and brothers.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.