Thursday of 13th Week in Ordinary Time, Yr. II: reflection

THEME: YOU TOO CAN STAND UP AGAIN AND WALK

Reading: Mt 9:1–8

Dear friends in Christ, in today’s gospel reading, a paralyzed man was brought to Jesus for healing, and He healed him. When one is paralyzed, he will suffer the loss of movement or sensation in a part or all parts of the body; the members of his body cease to function properly. For example, his hands and legs can no longer move properly or may not move at all. Such was the case with the man Jesus healed. That was why the man couldn’t come to Jesus on his own, but had to be brought by others.

Did you observe that instead of going straight to heal his physical paralysis for which he was brought, Jesus decided to first address an aspect of his life that was hidden from the eyes of other people, his spiritual life? He first said to him, “your sins are forgiven,” then, He added later, “rise, take your bed and go home.”

The action of Jesus suggested that the man was not only physically paralyzed, he was also spiritual paralyzed by sin. Perhaps, it was his spiritual paralysis that kept him in that condition of physical paralysis. Thus, to give him total freedom from physical paralysis, his spiritual paralysis needed to be dealt with, and that was what Jesus did first.

Dear friends, sin paralyzes us spiritually, making the spiritual part of our lives to malfunction. When our spiritual nature malfunctions, our physical nature struggles to deal with problems of nature; it is overwhelmed by natural exigencies and cannot rise and fight back. To win the battle of the physical nature, we must heal our spiritual nature, liberating it from whatever paralysis (sin) that has disrupted its normal function. If we do this, we too can stand up again and walk away from our numerous physical paralyses.

May the healing hands of Jesus free you from whatever is holding you down. Amen.

Fr Isaac Chima.