Meditations On The Gospel Of Luke For The FamilySample

"MEDITATION 10:A Paralytic is set Free from Disease and Sin"

For some, both in the past and now, Jesus was just a moral teacher; for others, he was a prophet, or a street preacher or a miracle worker (see 9:18-20). But for us, Christians, the nucleus of our faith in him is that Jesus was fully man and fully God. Something as simple as that sentence, that took years to be defined, is not only a definition of his essence, but also the key to understand the dimensions in which he acted in his mortal life. Jesus approached humans in all their dimensions. He cured the sick and reconciled them with God; he brought with himself healing and forgiveness. That is what we can see in the text we meditate upon today. In the presence of a group of his opponents (or, more precisely, enemies), Jesus performs an action that shatters their inner convictions. “How does he dare say the sins of that paralytic are forgiven? Who does this blasphemous preacher think he is? Let him just do the ‘easier’ things, tricky miracles and healings.” In fact, those wondrous actions could always be understood as some kind of illusion. But declaring a man’s sins are forgiven… that only God can do.
But there is another aspect in our text: the faith of those who come to Jesus. “Your faith has saved you.” We hear that sentence more than once.
Sometimes, it is the faith of the person saved by Jesus; sometimes it is the faith of those who come to intercede for others, as the men who bring the paralytic in our text, or the faith of Jairus (8:41-42), or that of the centurion in Capernaum (7:1-10). We tend to limit faith to the fact of believing “something” or “in someone,” but the Gospels show that faith is an attitude of confidence and an active effort. The men in our text have to overcome difficult conditions to bring the paralytic into Jesus’ presence. The woman with a hemorrhage has to elbow her way through the crowd to touch Jesus’ cloak (8:43-48). In spite of the fatal news about his daughter, Jairus overcomes his grief and follows Jesus (8:49-50). Although people try to keep him silent, the blind beggar shouts louder and louder to make himself heard by Jesus and be cured from his blindness (18:35- 43).
Jesus is both man and God; he heals us in body and soul. Faith is a set of convictions but also a way of facing life.

Rev. Fr. Mariano Perrón, Roman Catholic priest, Archdiocese of Madrid, Spain