The Sunday’s central theme is forgiveness. In the Gospel, Mark gives us the first of the five objections raised by the Scribes and the Pharisees which was Christ claiming the authority to forgive sins. In the first reading, Isaiah tells the people that God will demonstrate anew his love for them and blot out their sins. Christ’s claim to forgive sins fulfilled that promise.We know that the authority to forgive sins belongs to God alone. So, you can imagine the shock or the horror of the Scribes and the Pharisees at this Man’s action. Their objection was reasonable. “How could He?” Fortunately for us, there is no need for shock or horror. Instead, we are treated to yet another manifestation of Christ’s divinity.
In the healing of the paralytic, we catch a glimpse of the Jewish worldview. For them, there was a direct connexion between sin and sickness—sickness was the result of sin. Thus, to forgive a person was to start a person on the road to health. And to prove that He could forgive sins, Christ commanded the paralytic to pick up his stretcher and to walk home.
This connexion between sin and sickness needs some re-examination. There are many evidence that sicknesses are related to and spring from a mind or in some cases, a soul ill at ease. We call this connexion psychosomatic. I remember when I was younger, “spiritual directions” often triggered psychosomatic manifestation. My fellow novice can attest to that because we all had to see the Novice Master once every two weeks. When my turn came, I often had backaches. It was just psychological. Looking back then, I can laugh at it but at that time, it was terrible.
In medical science, the Placebo Effect is a good example linking how the brain thinks and how the body reacts. [1] Therefore, what the mind or the soul is, the body sometimes behaves accordingly. In this sense, the Jews were right. Sickness could be a manifestation of sin.
But, it is not always the case that there is a necessary connexion between sin and sickness because “seemingly” sane or healthy people are capable of sins we have never heard of. The mass killings of innocent people are good examples of “healthy” people who commit atrocious sins. Just because a person is healthy does not necessarily mean he or she has no sins. And on the contrary, we also have very ill people whom we know to be kind and good. These are the cases of “innocent” sufferings that prompt us to ask these usual questions: “Why, God? Why does a good person have to suffer the ravages of such a disease?”
In the curing of the paralytic, what is enough to note is that God forgives and Christ does so because He is God. What is relevant for Christian discipleship is that Christ exercises this forgiveness in the context of friendship and restoration of relationship.
Firstly, in the context of friendship, your man in question may have been paralysed. But, in reality, he was not so because he had friends who cared enough to hoist him up the roof and to lower him down into the place where Christ was. It was in response to their faith that Christ said to the paralytic, “My child, your sins are forgiven”. Friendship apparently plays an important role in the journey of forgiveness. True friendship is a part of the expression of faith. Often we think of faith as a personal “thing”. But, this idea of “me and Jesus” may be a manifestation of what is known as the “privatised” religion of “self-help” that runs counter to the “community”, otherwise known as the Church, the Body of Christ, the Communion of Saints which Christ came to establish. Have you ever wondered what has happened to so many of our youths in Sunday School or Confirmation fed upon this diet of “Me and Jesus”? I have asked Lifeline, Post-Confirmation to insert themselves into the community because the community of faith is where one is also nourished—in fact, the Eucharist we celebrate is an expression of this communion of faith. Therefore, no man or for that matter of speaking, no one is an island. Even the Carmelites Nuns, seemingly behind high walls, are part of this Communion of faith. The 4 friends of the paralytic, apart from the 12 whom Jesus called, are an appropriate expression of the Communion of Saints. Friends IN Christ ought to lead us TO Christ. Faith-filled friends mutually help each other leave the kingdom of sin for the Kingdom of God.
Secondly, in this healing of Christ we witness not just physical healing that took place but more than that. It was a restoration of relationship—pick up your stretcher and go home. The paralytic sent home meant he was restored to his family. This restoration challenges us today. We come to acknowledge the forgiveness of God. We are continually told that God is a forgiving one and we ourselves are invited to forgive one another. But what is forgiveness if not really a restoration of relationships? We remember the part that God is forgiving but conveniently forget the part which says “as we forgive those who sinned against us”. It is here that we search amongst the broken relationships in our family or community to see where and how we have closed ourselves to restoration. Is it not true that we often say, “I can forgive but I cannot forget” which could, in reality, mask a refusal to restore broken relationships. It is not easy. It is never meant to be easy because restoration often involves reopening of old wounds or remembering some past we want to forget. Some of us are tangled in the web of “you did this, you did that” and cannot see beyond the damage that unrestored relationships inflicts on us spiritually, mentally or physically. We know the tears of so many for whom their mind, body and soul are suffering because of the lack of desire or simply the inability to restore relationships that are broken. And regrets expressed at funerals are often too late.
Today, we rejoice that there are friendships that lead to greater freedom. We acknowledge and nourish them. We also ask God for help in restoring broken relationships which are necessary for our well-being so that like the paralytic, we may be freed from our past to walk into the fullness of Christ’s freedom just like John Paul II did in 1983 when he forgave and reconciled with Mehmet Ali Agca the man who tried to assassinate him in 1981.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The placebo effect is a measurable, observable or felt improvement or behaviour not attributable to a medication or invasive treatment that has been administered.
