“Your sins are forgiven!” These words bring consolation to those of us who understand that we need forgiveness, and who understand that we have sinned. For someone who has not understood either sin or forgiveness, it could seem like mere words or like something unimportant. We don’t know exactly what thoughts passed through the mind of the paralytic because he remained silent, but Jesus’ first words to him were not about curing his paralysis. The man didn’t seem to ask for forgiveness, nor did he seem to come to Jesus looking for anything other than a cure. Certainly Jesus reads hearts and minds, however, and provides the man immediately with the treatment that corresponds to his greatest suffering. The physical suffering may have incited the man to ask to be brought to Jesus, then again, the man may have discerned the greater moral suffering he endured from his sins and relied on his physical disability to be brought by others to Jesus.
Wednesday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
The Gospel of Saint Matthew presents a fairly graphic account of the real effects of demons around us. It would be a false interpretation of this Gospel to consider Jesus’ action, or the story itself, as purely symbolic. Indeed, if demons were merely myth, Jesus would have had the moral obligation to stand clearly against such ideas. Instead, Jesus gives us a teaching on what the demons are capable of doing and what they are permitted to do. Swine represent what is filthy in the animal world. Demons seek out what is filthy, and so if they are obliged to leave one place, they seek out another place of filth. Spiritually, filth corresponds to vice, and vice is the place where the evil spirits like to take up residence. These two men, possessed of demons, live in the place of death: the tombs. Vice, like virtue, is a stable disposition – in other words, it is habitual and more difficult to change. The demons like to re-enforce and strengthen our vices so that we may be convinced they are impossible to overcome after we have made valiant attempts. Jesus shows us that it is possible to overcome these spirits by simply casting them out. Jesus even teaches us to cast out the demons in His name.
Saint Thomas, Apostle
Saint Thomas the Apostle is incorporated into the revelation of Jesus’ resurrection in a particularly relevant way. There was one, even among the Apostles, who didn’t seem to receive everything he needed to become fully convinced of the resurrection. If all the other Apostles received a visit from the risen Christ, why should he be expected to believe without that visit? We should try to understand the heart of Saint Thomas: if the Lord and Teacher he followed for years seems to have excluded him, there must be some degree of hurt or incomprehension. “I thought Jesus loved me, why did He appear to everyone else while I was away?”