Fr Joe has written this short reflection on today’s Gospel.
At the beginning of today’s Gospel St Matthew tells us that Jesus came to his own town. St Matthew is talking about Capernaum, where Jesus stayed after leaving Nazareth with His mother Mary, to live in St Peter’s home. This story is also found in St Mark’s Gospel. He gives more information about the paralytic’s friends creating a hole in the roof of the house and lowering him down on a stretcher because of the density of the crowds. This explains why St Matthew states that Jesus seeing such faith says “courage my child, your sins are forgiven”
The scribes, the Jewish leaders and experts in the Mosaic Law, grumble in their minds that Jesus is blaspheming because only God can forgive sins and that is available to them through the sacrificial system. Jesus knowing what they were thinking responds by demonstrating his divine authority to do so by healing the paralytic as he says “but to prove to you that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins he said to the paralytic, get up and pick up your bed and walk”.
How can you verify what has taken place invisibly in the soul? Well, Jesus proves the hidden cure by performing publicly this visible cure. Since Jesus has the power to cure the effects of sin, which the scribes believe the disease to be, then surely, he has shown he has the power to cure the cause of illness, which the scribes believe is his sin. Therefore, Jesus has divine authority and power to absolve sin.
Jesus will after His resurrection pass onto his Apostles his authority to absolve and forgive sins in his name. “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven, if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” This is why the priest does not say in the prayer of absolution, Christ absolves you from your sins but I absolve you from your sins. The priest speaks in the first person as he fully identifies with Jesus himself (in persona Christi).
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