Commentary on the Gospel of

Fr. Roland Chidi, cmf

Mk2:1-12      Faith-Expression    

-        Faith-expression takes multiple dimensions

-        Faith imbued with charity

-        Charity without counting costs

Faith-expression takes multiple dimensions and in whatever form, it is always an edifying experience. Stories abound where believers praise and worship God for hours unending; Christians hold all night vigils in adoration of the Lord; lovers of the Lord embark on fasting in order to share their savings with the very poor and needy ones in far away countries! Today’s episode of faith-expression at first sight appears strange: ‘they removed the roof above him … let down the pallet on which the paralytic lay.’ Our Lord Jesus Christ focused, not on the physical breach of order of the bearers, instead on the motivating factor, namely their belief that Jesus would heal the paralytic. And so, the sacrificed and took all the risk.

Our Lord’s spontaneous response [‘When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, child, your sins are forgiven’], brings out the fact that God can write on a crooked line in the process of restoring human life. Furthermore, his attitude challenges us to always look beyond frontiers in the quest to living out our call to Christian charity. In practicing charity, we come very close to Jesus’ legacy of self-giving – charity is sacrificial. 

But surprisingly, some scribes among his audience were not attracted to the faith-charity dimension, as we do sometimes. In other word, we are encouraged to focus on the attitudinal response of our model, Jesus the Christ rather than that of the scribes. He reaches out in charity without counting costs; without questioning nor blaming them for removing the roof. Instead his eyes of faith behold the charity behind their action. And so, the paralytic secures double healing: his sins are forgiven and his paralysis healed. O God give us the grace to give in charity without counting costs, through Christ our Lord, amen.

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