Sacred Heart Parish
7th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B)
1.We have a wonderful parishioner who joins us in good weather at the 4 o’clock Eucharist – a young woman who, shortly after graduating from college, was paralyzed in a tragic automobile accident. She’s remarkable in so many ways. I have never heard her utter a word of complaint over the past 19 years. When I bring her Holy Communion, sometimes she’s selects the reading and sometimes I select the reading. Often times she will say, “Let’s go back to Mark, Chapter 2” – the story of Jesus curing the paralytic.
2.I would direct your attention to the wording of the prayers to which we all said “Amen” at the start of our Liturgy. We said to God our Father – “Keep before us the wisdom and love you have revealed in Jesus your Son. Help us to be like him in word and in deed.” As his followers, we find in the risen Christ the pattern for our own way of life and we find as well the very power to be conformed to that pattern. In this way, we fulfill St. Paul’s injunction – “Be imitators of God as his beloved children and walk in the way of love as Christ loved us and gave himself in sacrifice for us.” Another word for love is mercy; mercy is nothing other than love in the face of misery. Another word for love and mercy is forgiveness which has often been described as the final form of love. The theme of forgiveness, of reconciliation, of peacemaking, is central to our first and third readings this morning, and central also to the Season of Lent which begins this coming Wednesday. What is it the prophet Isaiah and the evangelist Mark have to say to us this day?
3.Our reading from Isaiah has its content in what is called the prophet’s book of consolation. God alone is savior, healer, reconciler, peacemaker. The prophet pictures God as doing something new, like the work of creation, in spite of the fact that the Israelites have burdened God with their sins and wearied God with their infidelity. Nevertheless, God says to us – “It is I who wipes out your offenses; your sins are remembered no more”. No wonder the psalmist says to us in our opening antiphon – “Lord, your mercy is my hope. My heart rejoices in your saving power.” In our Gospel reading, the evangelist Mark portrays Jesus in action in the midst of a controversy with those hostile to him with regard to the power of Jesus to forgive sins. Our Lord’s power to forgive sins is confirmed by his power to heal the paralyzed man. We have the marvelous, imaginative picture of those who were determined to bring the paralyzed man to Jesus by any means – even if they had to go through the roof. The Scribes accuse Jesus of blasphemy, an understandable charge because only God can forgive sins. Which is easier to say – as Jesus asks in our Gospel narrative – “Your sins are forgiven” (for which there is no empirical test) or to say – “Get up and walk” (for which there is immediate empirical evidence)?
4.Several years ago, Archbishop Tutu, great worker for racial justice and racial peace in South Africa, wrote a personal account of the aim of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He gave his book the wonderful title – “No Future Without Forgiveness”. Towards the end of the book he tells the story about some American Service personnel standing near the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. When asked about his captors, one of them says – “I will never forgive them”. His friend replied – “Then, it seems they still have you in prison, do they not?” There will be no future for Israel and the Palestinians without forgiveness; there will be no future for inter-religious relationships without forgiveness; no peaceful co-existence with Christians and Moslems, Christians and Jews, Jews and Moslems, without forgiveness. Whether we are concerned about two persons, a family of persons, two families, a parish of families, a nation of families, or two nations within the United Nations, there will be no future with forgiveness. Forgiveness has been described as the final form of love. The Church understands forgiveness as God’s gracious act whereby God assumes the initiative and takes away his contrite people’s sins. To accomplish this, God offers the sinner the grace of repentance – thus inviting the sinner’s free response without which there can be no forgiveness. Not only does God take away our sins, God invites us to join him in the ministry of reconciliation. God has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation. As St. Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians – “We are ambassadors for Christ in that he has entrusted to us the ministry of reconciliation”.
5.Forgiveness, of course, is at the heart of the Lenten discipline. What is to be our response? Is it to be “Yes” one moment and “No” another? Our second reading can help us in this regard. The Corinthians, it would seem, were accusing St. Paul of not being faithful to his promise to visit them again. They said his word was “Yes” one moment and “No” another. Paul defends himself but does so by raising the Corinthians minds and hearts to the Lord Jesus and to his relationship with his heavenly Father which was always, consistently, unvacillatingly “Yes” to God. So it must be with ourselves. Saying “Yes” makes demands. It’s like a signature on a dotted line – no hesitation, no half-heartedness, no mental reservations allowed. It’s like saying “Amen” – we approve – we promise – so be it. I suppose we should be very careful whenever we say “Yes”.