17 January 2020
Memorial of St. Anthony, Abbot
Jesus returns home after days away visiting the surrounding villages, driving out demons and curing the sick. The people of Capernaum likely were still telling stories about what Jesus had done during His previous visit, when He taught with His own authority, cast out a demon with a word, and cured the sick of the town. But this incident with the paralytic was something they could never have expected; indeed, our Gospel ends by saying “They were all astounded and glorified God, saying, ‘We have never seen anything like this.’”
Were they shocked that He could cure a paralyzed man? Likely not; again, had He not already done amazing things in their sight? If you had seen a man jump ten feet, would you be all that shocked to see him jump fifteen? No. Then what was it that so astounded them? It was these impossible words of Jesus: “Child, your sins are forgiven.”
To the Jewish mind of Jesus’ day, a person’s misfortunes and sufferings were directly linked to their righteousness before God. This is reflected somewhat in Psalm 37, which reads “Neither in my youth, nor now in old age have I seen the righteous one abandoned or his offspring begging for bread,” (Psalm 37:25). We see this way of thinking turned on its head in the story of Job, where the righteous man suffers terrible misfortune though he is entirely innocent; we see it nailed to the Cross in Jesus, who suffers the ultimately suffering though He is the source and summit of righteousness. To the scribes present at the home of Jesus when the paralytic came, this crippled man, clearly, was not righteous, was not in good standing with God, or he would not be in such straits. Remember in the story of the man born blind, how the disciples of Jesus ask Him “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). Even Simon and the others likely were stunned when, inexplicably, Jesus says to the man suspended before Him “Child, your sins are forgiven.”
“Who but God alone can forgive sins?” the scribes say. Did the disciples think it as well? They had, just the day before, seen Jesus cleanse a leper with but a word and a touch; could He cleanse a soul as well? How would Jesus prove that the man’s sins were forgiven, that he had been made righteous before God?
By also curing what the scribes believed was the outward sign of the paralytic’s inward reality. As the man’s soul was then made whole, so, too, his body. Notice, too, the matter of authority comes up: “But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth…” Already the people of Capernaum marveled at His teaching authority, and His authority over unclean spirits; now they see, with their own eyes, that He has authority over sin, an authority only God truly has. It is no wonder they had never seen anything like this, for nothing like it had ever occurred in the history of the universe.
Now we have a Church who, like the friends of the paralytics, brings us before Jesus when we are crippled by sin. Come to Him! Marvel in astonishment as He, with but a world, forgives your sins in confession and you are free to walk in the freedom He gives!