Thursday in the 13th Week of Ordinary Time, July 4, 2024

Matthew 9, 1-8

After entering a boat, Jesus made the crossing, and came into his own town. And there people brought to him a paralytic lying on a stretcher. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.” At that, some of the scribes said to themselves, “This man is blaspheming.” Jesus knew what they were thinking, and said: “Why do you harbor evil thoughts? 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 then said to the paralytic, “Rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.” He rose and went home. When the crowds saw this they were struck with awe and glorified God who had given such authority to men.

St. Matthew describes the aftermath of the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount (in chapters 5-7 of his Gospel) in terms of a series of miracles in which the Lord Jesus drives out evils of various kinds: he heals the leper, the centurion’s servant, Peter’s mother-in-law, and the crowd.  Then he drives out the storm on the sea and the devils from the two possessed men on the other side of the sea.  Now we see the Lord forgiving sins, driving out the guilt incurred on account of sin.  This is new, and with the exception of the case of the Good Thief as the Lord hung on the Cross, it is unique in the Gospels.  No one else asks the Lord for forgiveness, which the Good Thief asks for implicitly in his confession and request that the Lord remember him.  The Lord explicitly forgives the paralyzed man’s sins in order to show that he has the power to do this, and because he knows that the man wants forgiveness but does not dare to ask for it.  

“When Jesus saw their faith.”  Matthew tells us that it is the faith of the man’s friends that the Lord sees.  He “saw” (or, “looked upon”, or “experienced”) their faith through their act of bringing the man to him, and he saw it in their hearts.  The world, which cannot see our hearts, will only see our faith when it sees our works.  “Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.”  Literally, “Be of good cheer, child.”  The Lord addressed the man as a father would his son, and then gives him what only God could give.  In calling him “child” and then forgiving his sins, the Lord shows that we do not cut ourselves off from being his children even when we sin (except by apostasy).  “This man is blaspheming.”  Jesus, who knew the thoughts of the paralyzed man, knew the thoughts of the scribes as well, and demonstrates this: “Why do you harbor evil thoughts?”  These words alone should have had an effect on these scribes.  If Jesus can read thoughts, then why could he not also have the power to forgive sins?  “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?”  Here, the Lord tells us that he has healed in the paralytic the deepest wound that afflicted him, which manifested as paralysis.  He does not provide a superficial cure such as simply enabling the man to walk again, but one which enables him to truly resume his life.  “But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”  Now he tells the scribes why he acted as he had.  They need to know that he is (1) the Son of Man, the Messiah, and (2) that the Son of Man has the power to forgive sins.  This contrasts with the expectation many had of the Messiah as simply a military leader, not necessarily a religious one, much less a miracle worker who could forgive sins.  “Rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.”  The man picks up the stretcher on which he had formerly lay, helpless.  The Lord has him show the fullness of his immediate recovery in this way.

“When the crowds saw this they were struck with awe and glorified God who had given such authority to men.”  Because we have so minimized the idea of sin, whether in general or in our own lives, we minimize the wonder of forgiveness.  The people here “were struck with awe and glorified God” when they recognized that Jesus had the power of forgive sins.  They celebrated this with great joy.  They had gone to the Temple to make sin offerings, with no certainty that their sins were forgiven.  In Jesus, they saw that he truly forgave sins, that God had come to earth to forgive sins.  They saw that the forgiveness of sins was accomplished with such great power that the healing of paralysis was but a sign of it.  We should think hard about what sin means, and what its forgiveness means.  The miracles that take place in the confessional are greater than any miracles that take place in a hospital room or on the street.