Seventh Sunday of Year B - 22nd February 2009

Your sins are forgiven

St Mark gives us the fourth healing miracle of his Gospel. Each healing offers a different insight into what healing means:  successful confrontation with evil forces; being able to serve; being restored to family and community. Today's insight is on inner healing.

By forgiving the paralytic his sins, reuniting him with God and with the community, Jesus performs the most important healing of all. He knows that before anything else, the man needs to be released from a deep sense of guilt. Of course, this is less tangible - and, to those around would have seemed blasphemous as only God alone has the power to forgive sin.

Jesus senses their disquiet and addresses it directly, posing the question, "which is easier: to forgive sin or to make a paralytic walk?" He then makes the man's inner healing visible by ordering him to get up and walk.

This time the crowd's reaction is mixed. Some rejoice in Jesus' divine authority to forgive sin. Others, however, react negatively to this sign of God's presence in their midst. Where do I stand?

The Scriptures constantly assure us of God's mercy even when we turn away from God through serious sin. God knows the hopeless feeling that such sin brings, as well as the scars it leaves within us. So God hurries to tell us how precious we are in his sight despite our deformity. God wants us to know that his mercy has far more power to heal than sin has to wound.

The Church uses ashes to mark the beginning of the season of Lent, when we remember our mortality and mourn for our sins. In our present liturgy for Ash Wednesday, we use ashes made from the burned palm branches distributed on the Palm Sunday of the previous year. The priest blesses the ashes and imposes them on our foreheads, making the sign of the cross and saying, "Remember, man you are dust and to dust you shall return," or "Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel." As we begin this holy season of Lent in preparation for Easter, we must remember the significance of the ashes we have received: We mourn and do penance for our sins. We again convert our hearts to the Lord, who suffered, died, and rose for our salvation. We renew the promises made at our baptism, when we died to an old life and rose to a new life with Christ. Finally, mindful that the kingdom of this world passes away, we strive to live the kingdom of God now and look forward to its fulfilment in heaven.