Daily Gospel Reflection
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December 5, 2022
One day as Jesus was teaching,
Pharisees and teachers of the law,
who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem,
were sitting there,
and the power of the Lord was with him for healing.
And some men brought on a stretcher a man who was paralyzed;
they were trying to bring him in and set him in his presence.
But not finding a way to bring him in because of the crowd,
they went up on the roof
and lowered him on the stretcher through the tiles
into the middle in front of Jesus.
When Jesus saw their faith, he said,
“As for you, your sins are forgiven.”
Then the scribes and Pharisees began to ask themselves,
“Who is this who speaks blasphemies?
Who but God alone can forgive sins?”
Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them in reply,
“What are you thinking in your hearts?
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 said to the one who was paralyzed,
“I say to you, rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.”
He stood up immediately before them,
picked up what he had been lying on,
and went home, glorifying God.
Then astonishment seized them all and they glorified God,
and, struck with awe, they said,
“We have seen incredible things today.”
I’m a rule follower; always have been and always will be. I tend to love all things ordered and procedural. I have six children, so rules and procedures help siblings get along and keep our home reasonably clean and safe. When confronted with issues that inevitably arise, my husband and I often ask our children, “How could we solve this problem better next time?”
When I first read today’s gospel, I focused on the broken rule—they should have waited their turn! Not to mention the seemingly dangerous idea of dropping down through the roof. I tried to imagine how I would react if I were Jesus, but it was difficult not to react as a mom.
In the case of the paralyzed man, the men who helped him saw the great crowds and decided the best solution was to climb up onto the building and lower him down through the roof. Whether the crowd saw this as fair doesn’t matter; and apparently, no one was hurt. Jesus embraces their solution and rewards them for their persistent faith. His answer to them is simply, “As for you, your sins are forgiven.”
We don’t know if the helpers were good friends or just people who saw someone in great need. Regardless, their decision to be a part of the solution allowed them to receive the grace of forgiveness. This is an excellent lesson: We should help those in need regardless of our relationship with them.
There are many ways to solve problems, even when it might include breaking some rules of etiquette or blurring safety lines. Sometimes a child-like faith means pushing some boundaries to get to the heart of faith.
With renewed focused on the Lord, may we be inspired to find creative, Christ-centered solutions to the various problems we encounter each day.
Prayer
Lord, how wonderful is the power you manifest in today’s gospel. You not only healed the paralyzed man of his physical infirmity, you also healed him of his sins by forgiving him. May you heal us of everything that separates us from you and help us to serve you as faithfully as the friends of the paralytic served him by carrying his stretcher and placing it at your feet. Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. Galgano is the source of a real-life sword in the stone story.
He was born in Tuscany in 1148 and grew up to become a knight. He lived the rowdy life of a soldier, fighting and filling his senses with pleasures of the flesh.
One night, when he was 20 years old, he was visited by Michael the Archangel, who showed him a vision of the Lord flanked by the disciples on a nearby mountain. When he woke the next day and mounted his horse, it refused to go anywhere except to the nearby mountain that had appeared in Galgano’s dream. So he went there.
Accounts differ as to what happened next. In one version of his story, he was overcome with reverence and wanted to pray. Finding no cross to center his attention, he thrust his sword into the ground, where it fused with rock and formed a cross in its hilt.
In another version of his story, a voice called out to Galgano, urging him to give up his life of dissolution. Galgano replied that it was easier to split stone with a sword, and thrust his weapon into a rock to prove his point, expecting it to snap in half. To his shock, it entered the rock to its hilt, as though he were cutting butter, and became one with the stone.
In either case, the event resulted in Galgano taking up the prayerful and simple life of a hermit on that mountain top, and he became a sought-after voice of wisdom and spiritual insight. When he died in 1181 at the age of 33, a number of bishops and abbots attended his funeral, and he was canonized a saint just four years later. An abbey was built on the hilltop and around his sword.
St. Galgano’s sword remains on the mountain top today in Tuscany, surrounded by the ruins of the abbey that was built there. Recent studies have validated that the sword is not a modern fake—it is of a simple design that would have been common in the 12th century. Radar analysis shows a cavity beneath the sword, which may hold the saint’s body.
The story of King Arthur and Excalibur became popular in the decades after St. Galgano’s canonization, so some think that this saint's sword might have been the inspiration for that legend, though the influences are hard to trace. St. Galgano is depicted in today's featured image by Luigi Gregori, who was artist in residence at Notre Dame from 1874-1891, in an illustration that belongs to the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art on campus.
St. Galgano, you dedicated your life to the Lord in a dramatic conversion that involved a sword in a stone—pray for us!
Image Credit: Luigi Gregori (Italian, 1819-1896), Saint Galgano, n.d., black chalk on wove paper. Raclin Murphy Museum of Art: Gift of the Artist, AA2009.056.367.)