Monday in the Second Week of Advent, December 5, 2022

Luke 5, 17-26

One day as Jesus was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem, were sitting there, and the power of the Lord was with him for healing. And some men brought on a stretcher a man who was paralyzed; they were trying to bring him in and set him in his presence. But not finding a way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on the stretcher through the tiles into the middle in front of Jesus. When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “As for you, your sins are forgiven.” Then the scribes and Pharisees began to ask themselves, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who but God alone can forgive sins?” Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them in reply, “What are you thinking in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But 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, rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.”  He stood up immediately before them, picked up what he had been lying on, and went home, glorifying God. Then astonishment seized them all and they glorified God, and, struck with awe, they said, “We have seen incredible things today.”

We speak of the forgiveness of sins at Mass all the time, and we know that our sins are forgiven in the Sacraments of Baptism and Penance, so for us it is something easy to obtain.  For the Jews, however, it was not.  They believed that to be forgiven from sins a person needed to make the journey to Jerusalem and to offer a prescribed sacrifice in the Temple.  Even so, this did not actually bring forgiveness of sin but, at most, a postponement of punishment.  The Jews knew this and so when John began preaching repentance and baptizing in the Jordan, the people crowded to him.  They knew that he offered a sign, but still a better sign that the sacrifices in the Temple, for “it is impossible that with the blood of oxen and goats sin should be taken away” (Hebrews 10, 4). 

That Jesus openly and actually forgave sins shocked the Pharisees, as it should have, for they were right: only God can forgive sins.  The Lord’s forgiveness of sins in the Gospel for today’s Mass amounted to a claim of divinity.  Furthermore, the claim was validated by his being able to grant the paralyzed man before him the power to walk, for only God can do this, too.  That the Pharisees dismissed his claim to forgive sins while being unable to dispute the healing shows their desperation not to believe in the Lord: He cannot be the Son of God, therefore he is not the Son of God.  That is, the Son of God, the Messiah, was not supposed to look like them; they were not supposed to know where he came from (according to them); he was certainly not supposed to have a Galilean accent.  And so they fought against him and the mounds of proof of his divinity that he put all around them.

We might think about this scene in Luke: it is evening and the moon and stars pierce the darkness overhead.  Somewhere in the house a lamp is lit.  Flies buzz around.  Not far away, men are putting their fishing boats into the water for a long night’s work.  A certain warmness lingers in the sir after the day but chill is beginning to enter it.  It will not become cold though as the temperature in this season remains fairly temperate.  Travelers often sleep outside in the grass.  A large crowd has overflowed into the courtyard of a moderately sized house and it keeps mostly quiet.  Many in the crowd, however, are plagued with injuries and sicknesses, and they are struggling as they lie down or try to stand up and move.  Shouting and murmuring can be heard, especially in and just around the house and every so often the crowd shifts as amazed, stunned people make their way out of it.  A disturbance on the roof of the house arrests the attention of many on the crowd, and people begin pointing and asking questions of one another.  Some men have climbed up on the roof and are shifting the roof tiles.  It is hard to see from the back of the crowd, but the men then raise up on ropes some large bundle, a man-sized bundle.  The men then lower the bundle on ropes into the house.  It is not clear why they are doing this.  And then a ripple moves quickly through the assembly that Jesus of Nazareth, the healer, is forgiving sins.  As the men climb down the roof again and take back with them another man, the one in the bundle, who is crying aloud for joy and praising Almighty God, they ask excitedly about what happened.  The men answer in wonder.  It is then that “astonishment seized them all and they glorified God, and, struck with awe, they said, ‘We have seen incredible things today.’ ”  We ought never to take for granted the marvelous work the Lord does for us by forgiving our sins through those to whom he has given a share of this power.