In today’s Gospel (Mark 2:1-12) we find our Lord again in Capernaum. By this time there were throngs who were seeking to hear His preaching and teaching. St. Mark records “Many gathered together, so that there was no longer room to receive them, not even near the door.”
And so we can sympathize with the four men who bring today’s paralytic to receive healing at the hand (or word) of our Lord. They arrive carrying the unfortunate man, and the crowds are such that even one cannot enter, let alone five with one carried on a pallet. What could they do?
There was an image we saw this past week that said, “The Lord told us that faith can move mountains. But do not be surprised when your faith is answered by Him giving you a shovel.”
Perhaps it’s a trite saying, but it DOES accurately reflect the hearts and thoughts of the “four friends” of today’s paralytic. A mountain of people needed to be overcome—and the faith of the four was not to be denied!
One should conclude that their faith led them “by the Spirit” to open that roof! Their paralyzed friend needed to find his way before the Lord. Their view of this ‘need’ was no different from the view of the woman with the issue of blood. Her faith affirmed for her that if she simply touched the hem of the Lord’s robe, she knew that she would be healed. These four knew that if they managed to bring their friend before the Lord, he too would be healed.
Within Holy Scripture we have such examples of faith. The woman from Canaan begged for her daughter to be healed, and she was. The Centurion asked that his servant might be healed, and he was. The ruler of the synagogue asked that his daughter be healed, and she was raised from the dead. All of these came in faith, and their faith was answered. In many instances, our Lord responded to such faith with His words, “Go in peace. Your faith has made you well.” (such as Lk 17:19)
But there are other times when the Lord acts without such expressions of faith. This does not mean that faith is missing. But it does mean that God is sovereign, and He can choose to do as He wills. It calls to mind the man whose son was plagued by seizures, who came to Jesus for healing (indicating faith at some level), but the Lord was on Tabor with Peter, James and John, and so the man found only the nine remaining Apostles, who could not heal the boy. In that account (Mk 9:24) the man cries to the Lord, “I believe. Help my unbelief,” recognizing that his faith was too feeble. And there is the account of Lazarus, where Mary and Martha do not seem to have sufficient faith, and yet Jesus raises their brother being four days dead.
St. Theophan says, We must do our part to cultivate a spirit of acceptance, a faith which confesses, ‘I am lost and can be saved only by the Lord Jesus Christ”; love which fervently strives to devote all to the Lord and Savior, sparing nothing; hope that does not hope in itself, but only in its assurance that the Lord will not abandon us and will help us in every way, both internally and externally throughout all of our life, until our hope takes us to the place where He Himself abides.
May our Lord give to us the desire to cultivate such a faith. May He see in us a fervent hope in His unwaning love for us. May our faith and hope and love engender within us an even more fervent longing for a truly and sincerely repentant heart.
And when He sees our faith, may He forgive us, each and every one of us, all of our sins.
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