Thursday, July 2, 2020

Thursday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

(Amos 7:10-17; Matthew 9:1-8)

It is said that St. Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio) could tell when a person needed confession.  His eyes seemed to look into one’s soul.  A similar capacity was shown in the movie last year about Mr. Rogers.  Seeing a young man with an injured nose, he knew that it was due to more than the excuse he was given.  In today’ gospel Jesus exhibits this ability of looking into the heart of people.

A paralytic is brought to Jesus.  Ostensibly he comes to have his body healed.  But Jesus recognizes that the corporal defect is not what is most ailing the man.  Jesus forgives the paralytic’s sin causing the most distress.  The religious workers comment that Jesus’ action violates God’s sovereignty over sin.  Jesus then shows that he has received authority to forgive sins by curing the paralytic’s physical ailment.  The passage ends with the people glorifying God for giving men the power to forgive.

We should hear the word “men” as referring to priests today.  God has given to the priests of the Church authority to forgive sins.  We are not helpless if we find ourselves guilty of an unjust deed.  We do not have to journey to a faraway place to make a sin offering.  We only have to repent of our wrong-doing, confess our sin to a priest, and sincerely promise to avoid the sin in the future.  We can put aside the worry of having done something that will upend us forever.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Thursday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

(Amos 7:10-17; Matthew 9:1-8)

The world will long be appalled by the atrocities committed by the Nazis in World War II. They killed over six million Jews in their quest to show Aryan supremacy. The horror is being duplicated in a sense by the millions of abortions perpetrated every year. Since the crime was legalized in the United States, approximately fifty million human lives yearning to be born in this country alone have been obliterated. The gospel today indicates the possibility of forgiveness for these massive manifestations of sinfulness.

The people are bewildered by Jesus’ forgiving the sins of the paralytic. They wonder not only how Jesus could ignore the obvious desire of the man for healing but also how he could appropriate to himself the power to forgive. After all, only God can undo all the damage that sin causes. Graciously Jesus does not leave them in suspense. To show the people that he comes from God with the power to forgive, he cures the paralytic of his infirmity.

In a way more dramatic than a cure, Jesus will testify to his ability to forgive all the sins of the world – including those of the Nazis and those who have participated in abortion. He dies on the cross and then rises from the dead to insure us that our sins do not separate us from the love of God. They are nothing to be proud of and should be confessed, but they are forgivable and we, therefore, redeemable. Jesus’ death and resurrection have enabled us to walk with him truth and in love.