Daily Mass Gospel Reflection - First Comes Forgiveness

Word on Fire Ministry ^ | 7.6.23 | Bishop Robert Barron

[MurphsLaw]

Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Matthew 9:1–8

Friends, in today’s Gospel,
the Lord heals a paralytic after first forgiving his sins.
Jesus’ initial words to this paralyzed man are,
“Your sins are forgiven.”
Why does God forgive our sins?
Because he wants us alive, he wants us moving,
he wants us in action, realizing what we can be.

Jesus comes to liberate us for deeper life,
to open a new future to us.
Sin is a refusal to live according to God’s purposes and desires.
Our obsession with past sins paralyzes us.
God is opposed to this obsession with the past,
because it renders us unable to move.

I can brood over my past sins to such a degree
that I become finally paralyzed, unable to move.
“Your sins are forgiven” is another way of saying,
“Don’t be paralyzed by sins that you undoubtedly worry about
far more than God does.”

After saying his sins are forgiven, Jesus says,
“Rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.”
That’s the way it works:
First comes the forgiveness of sins,
and that is a liberating power in us.
Now I can live for the future.

[MurphsLaw]

+++After entering a boat,
Jesus made the crossing, and came into his own town.
And there people brought to him a paralytic lying on a stretcher.
When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic,
"Courage, child, your sins are forgiven."
At that, some of the scribes said to themselves,
"This man is blaspheming."
Jesus knew what they were thinking, and said,
"Why do you harbor evil thoughts?
Which is easier, to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,'
or to say, 'Rise and walk'?
But that you may know that the Son of Man
has authority on earth to forgive sins"–
he then said to the paralytic,
"Rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home."
He rose and went home.
When the crowds saw this they were struck with awe
and glorified God who had given such authority to men.+++

[ebb tide]

First Comes Forgiveness

Silly title, again.

First comes contrition, Confession, penance and a promise to ammend one's life; then comes forgiveness.

But I guess that sacrament has gone to the wayside in Frankenchurch.