Today's readings remind us that God can use anyone, no matter their background or profession, to bring forth his message of love and redemption. In the first reading, Amos is a shepherd who is called by God to prophesy to the people of Israel. He makes it clear to the king that he is not a trained prophet, nor does he belong to any particular group of prophets. Yet, God chooses him to speak out against the injustices and corruption of his time.
In a similar way, Jesus not only heals the paralytic man who is brought to him in today’s gospel, but makes of him a witness to others, through his miraculous healing. The man is unable to walk or even move, yet Jesus sees in him a person worthy of love and redemption and a child of God who had the potential to go out and proclaim as much. Jesus says to the paralytic, "Your sins are forgiven; get up and walk." This statement is not just a physical healing, but also a spiritual one and is an indication of the power Jesus, as God, would one day give even to his first priests and bishops, the apostles. After he rose from the dead and appeared to them, he breathed on them and said, “Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained” John 20:23. This then, is where the sacrament comes from—not from mere mortals, but from the Risen Lord, who is God and who at the Incarnation and Conception in the womb of our Blessed Mother Mary, assumed a human nature. As God, he conferred on the apostles charisms such as healing and raising the dead and casting out demons, and to that list, you can also add, for the good of all mankind, the forgiveness of sins.
Only God can forgive sins committed against him, and this is what perplexed the authorities who witnessed the healing of the paralytic and the accompanying words which preceded that healing wherein Jesus indirectly declared that he had authority to forgive sins, because… he was the “Son of Man” which was a prophetic title for the Messiah in the prophecy of Daniel: ‘there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven’ (Dan 7:13-14). Daniel is marvelling in this prophecy— that God took on the form of a person... a son of man. Jesus identifies himself with that vision, which technically, he himself
had given to Daniel. Likewise Jesus called himself the ‘cornerstone’, identifying himself with Isaiah 28:16 and Zechariah 10:4, and on the Cross he identified himself as the eternal heir to King David by quoting Psalm 22: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ By calling himself ‘Son of Man’ Jesus states clearly that he is truly a human being as well as truly God, which is the thrust of Daniel’s prophecy and vision. So when Caiaphas asks Jesus if he is Son of God, Jesus replies that he is the Son of Man who will be seen sitting at the right hand of God (Matthew 26:63-64). He is God and man, and as such, has the power to forgive sin. That power he later confers on mere mortals, the apostles, and all their successors and priests, made so by them, as a ministry of spiritual healing within the Sacrament of Reconciliation as he knew it would evolve into today’s modern form of its celebration.
We are all called by God to be his instruments of love and redemption in the world, but in the Church, our priests are gifts to each of us, even to one another, through which this fountain of healing overflows to the entire Church as they have been asked to minister “in persona Cristi” – in, and on behalf of Christ who chose them for this ministry. This is why it is all the more grievous when one of them acts in a way contrary to the dignity of that calling. Hence, we need to pray for our priests whom the devil and his demons will attack all the more.
We are all called, along with our priests, to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ. Just as Amos was taken from his ordinary life as a shepherd and called by God to prophesy, so too are we called to step out of our comfort zones and serve the Lord being signs of contradiction to the world which sets itself up against the goodness of God. May we have the courage to listen to God's voice and respond with obedience, just as Amos did. May we also have the faith to believe that our sins are forgiven any time we have gone to receive that forgiveness with a contrite heart in the Sacrament of Confession.
As Jesus said to the paralytic man, "Get up and walk." May we hear those words not just as a physical command, but as a spiritual one. May we rise up from our beds of doubt and fear,
and walk in the light of God's love. May we spread the Good News of Jesus Christ to all those around us and receive the blessings which will overflow. The Son of Man is with us, and we shall see him on the last day, riding on the clouds of heaven, coming to judge the living and the dead. May we be prepared by allowing him to cleanse us beforehand and to give us the gift of being true and authentic followers of his. Amen.
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