Today, we hear about a group of friends who bring a paralytic to Jesus for healing. Seeing the faith of this group of friends, he forgives the sins of the paralytic. It is noteworthy that it is not the faith of the paralytic himself that saves him. Jesus later tells him to rise, pick up his mat, and to go. Many people in Ancient Israel came to Jesus for healing in his day. Many come to him for healing in our own day as well. We are always looking for a cure for something in our lives. Sometimes we look in many different places for healing in our lives, often times in the places where we should not be looking for help.
We want healing in our lives. We want mercy in our lives as well. It can be easy to ask for mercy for ourselves. It might be harder to understand why others should receive mercy. Instead, we may want justice in the way we ourselves understand justice, justice from our perspective. Not the way God understands justice. Yet Pope Francis has this to say: “Justice on its own is not enough. With mercy and forgiveness, God goes beyond justice, he subsumes it and exceeds it in a higher event in which we experience love, which is at the root of true justice.” When we are hurt or wronged, it is natural to seek justice. God shows us a better way, a way that leads to love. God had mercy on the paralytic and his friends. Perhaps if it was just purely justice, it might have been a very different Gospel passage. Let us pray this week that we can help move our world beyond justice to mercy and forgiveness. May the mercy of God and the wisdom of Pope Francis guide us and lead us on our journey of faith.
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