Monday, II Week of Advent
(Isaiah 35:1-10; Luke 5:17-26)
Once I went to a party where no liquor was served. I felt a little disappointed because I was looking forward to relaxing with a glass of wine or bottle of beer. Then I was told the motive of celebration. My friend Bill, as gracious a man and loving a father as one could find, was celebrating his sobriety. Fifteen years to the day, Bill gave up drinking and never looked back.
Of course, drinking in itself is not bad. Nor can alcoholics be accused of sin for every drink they take. As Alcoholics Anonymous teaches, compulsive drinking is a disease that diminishes moral responsibility. But at some point alcoholics must take responsibility for their actions under intoxication. When alcoholics repeatedly become careless on the job and abusive at home after drinking, they must stop committing what for them has become a serious sin. Then their refraining from sin becomes the source of their total healing.
In the gospel Jesus forgives the sin of the paralytic as the first step to his total healing. As Jesus hints, his saving of the man’s soul is an even greater claim to his being the Messiah than his healing of the man’s lameness. But to fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy of the Messiah as well, Jesus makes the lame man “leap like a stag.”
Jesus comes to save all of us from our sins. He brings forgiveness when we repent and confess our wrongdoing. As we turn away from our vices – whether obvious ones like drinking too much or more subtle ones like looking at others as objects of desire – Jesus will provide us the grace to live, like my friend Bill, gracious and loving lives.
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