Forgive and be forgiven - the path to health: This Sunday's gospel
Posted by Br Kieran Fenn on 16 February 2012 | 0 Comments7th Sunday in Ordinary Time Mark 2:1-12. This passage is a healing miracle wrapped around a controversy story concerning Jesus’ (and the church’s) authority to forgive sin.
Forgiveness of sin paves the way for recovery of health. The reaction of the scribes is the very human one of seeing that on human lips a declaration of forgiveness is blasphemous, while to command a paralysed man to get up and walk is ridiculous, since it lies beyond human capacity to make each command effective. For Jesus who calls on the power of his Abba, both are possible.
In the telling of the story there is no necessary implication that the man’s need to receive forgiveness was the cause of his paralysis. Yet paralysis is an effective symbol of the captivity under which the whole world lay before the onset of the Kingdom in Jesus. We see again the command, ‘Arise’, the word Jesus addresses to all of us.
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