Friday of Week 1 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Mark 2:1-12

After some days, Jesus returns to Capernaum from his refuge in the desert. Immediately the crowds gather in and around the house where he is staying. It is so crowded that there is no room to get in or out. The ‘house’ is not identified and it is not important. In the early Christian communities, they gathered in one house to celebrate the Eucharist. Jesus was there among them. Some people are inside the house with Jesus; others are still on the outside.

Then, four men arrived carrying a paralytic friend. They were anxious to get to Jesus. Seeing no way in, they went up by the outside staircase and on to the flat roof, removed a few tiles, and let the man down right at the feet of Jesus.

Jesus is touched by their faith, trust and confidence in him—all essential conditions for healing. Jesus says to the paralysed man:

Child, your sins are forgiven.

This must have been a surprising statement to the paralytic. He had come for healing, not forgiveness. Some scribes who were also present were not only surprised, they were deeply shocked, thinking contemptuously to themselves:

Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?

They are perfectly right, but their eyes are closed to drawing the obvious conclusion. They don’t see because they do not want to see, because—even worse—they think they can see. Even today, we meet Christians like that, who are convinced they and they alone are in sole possession of the ‘truth’.

Jesus, knowing their thoughts then challenges them:

Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’?

Then he tells the man:

I say to you, stand up, take your mat, and go to your home.

Of course, telling a person their sins are forgiven is certainly easier, but does the fact that Jesus could heal the paralytic instantly also mean that his sins were forgiven?

We need to realise the close links the Jews of the time made between sin and sickness. Many kinds of sickness were seen as punishment for personal sin or even the sins of parents (see also the story of the man born blind in John’s Gospel, chap 9). The man in this present story was understood to be paralysed because of some sin in his life. If Jesus could clearly remove the illness, then the cause of the illness was also being taken away. In so doing, Jesus makes it clear that in forgiving the man’s sin, he was not blaspheming. He was what he claimed to be.

In our time, we realise that there can be a link between physical illness and the way we act and relate with people. We know that there is a mutual influence between our thinking and our attitudes, feelings and behaviour. Some sicknesses can be psychosomatic, or might result from stress or an imbalance in our relationships with others, our work or our environment. The words holiness, wholeness, health and healing all have a common root. The whole person, one in whom all parts are in perfect harmony, is the truly holy person.

That wholeness is something we need to pray and work for. The paralysed man represents all those who are paralysed in other ways, those who are not able to behave with the freedom that a well-integrated person has. And that integration and wholeness concerns our relations with others, with ourselves, with our environment and, of course, with God.

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Friday of Week 1 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Hebrews 4:1-5,11

We read today of the “rest” which only God can give. The symbol of “rest” is seen now at a deeper dimension. The promise given to the Israelites is a foreshadowing of that given to Christians, and it is “good news”. Because the Promised Land was seen as the place of rest that God provided for his people, it was a share in his own rest, which he enjoyed after he had finished his creative work (Gen 2:2). The author now relates this meaning of God’s rest to Psalm 95 (in yesterday’s liturgy).

The reading begins with the advice that, while the opportunity to avail of God’s “rest” is present, the Hebrews should avail of it. The implication is that the Israelites in the desert had failed to use the opportunity when they had it (see yesterday’s reading).

The comparison in the current reading is between the Israelites and the Christians. The Israelites, who doubted the word of God, did not enter a place of rest which, for them, was the Promised Land. But God’s promise cannot remain unfulfilled, so it now applies to Christians, invited to enter into a very different Promised Land of unalterable and unending happiness.

If we are to enjoy the “rest” that God wishes us to have, we must open our hearts to God’s call and God’s message. The “good news” (Greek, euangelion; Latin, evangelium) has been coming to us just as it has been coming to God’s people for generations. In the past, however, many did not benefit because, as we saw in yesterday’s reading, they had closed their ears to the message.

However, those who really put their trust in the message—in both their hearts and in their way of life—will enter that “rest”. They are unlike those others of whom God said:

As in my anger I swore,
‘They shall not enter my rest’…

The author now extends the limited meaning of “rest” in Psalm 95 to the “rest” that Genesis speaks of God enjoying at the end of the six days of Creation. And that “rest” has been a reality ever since. And we need to remember that it is God’s “rest” we are speaking about, not ours.

It is for the Hebrew Christians then, while they have the opportunity, to enter that “rest” and not find it closed off because of their refusal to believe—that is, to believe fully in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.

Our goal in life, too, is to experience that eternal place of rest face to face with our loving God. And the warning in this reading is totally appropriate for us too. If we want to experience that future “rest”, we need to be always united with our God in the now. He is to be found nowhere else.

There may be some kind of message here, too, for the way we spend our days and times of rest, especially our Sundays. Are they really days of ‘rest’? Do we spend the time in ways that are creative and nurturing for both spirit and body?

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