Saint Hilary (c.315-367)
Bishop of Poitiers, Doctor of the Church
Commentary on Saint Matthew's gospel, 8:5 (cf. SC 254, p. 199 rev.)
"Rise, pick up your mat, and go home"
[In Matthew's gospel Jesus has just cured two foreigners in pagan territory.] In this one paralytic all the pagans are presented before Christ to be healed. But even the terms of the healing need to be studied: what he says to the paralysed man is not: “Be healed” nor “Get up and walk” but “Courage, child, your sins are forgiven” (Mt 9:2). Sin had been transmitted among all nations in one man, Adam, and that is why he who is called "child" is presented to be healed...: because he is God's first work... he now receives the mercy that comes from the forgiveness of that first disobedience. Indeed, we don't see that this paralytic had committed any sin; and the Lord also said that blindness from birth had not been contracted as a result of a personal or hereditary sin (Jn 9:3)...
None can forgive sins except God alone, and so he who healed them is God... And so that people might understand that he had taken flesh for the remission of their sins and to gain resurrection for their bodies, he said: “That you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins on earth” – he then said to the paralytic: “Rise, pick up your stretcher”. It would have been enough to have said: “Rise”, but... he added: “Pick up your stretcher and go home.” First he granted remission of sins, then he manifested the power of the resurrection, and then, by making him take up his stretcher, he taught that weakness and pain will no longer afflict the body. Finally, by sending this man home healed, he showed that believers must rediscover the road to paradise, the same road that Adam, the father of all, abandoned when he was spoiled by the stain of sin.
Daily Marriage Tip for January 18, 2019:
“The two dimensions of conjugal union, the unitive and the procreative, cannot be artificially separated without damaging the deepest truth of the conjugal act itself.” – St. John Paul II, Letter to Families, no. 12. The Church’s teaching on openness to life has everything to do with the very meaning of love and marriage; it is a treasure to us.