I met a doctor in a convention. Her commitment to the service of God’s
Kingdom was amazing. Later, her
testimonies revealed to me that she was not always that way. She used to be a typical product of modernity
believing more in her medical expertise than in God. She used to treat her patients as mere bodies
with illness. Compassion was not her virtue. She would treat them only if the
price was right. What changed her was the invitation of her friends to join a
religious organization. Gradually, with the support of the organization she
encountered God and henceforth became a different person. She began to see her medical profession as an
opportunity to serve the poor. For
countless times, she called on her colleagues to organize medical outreach
programs in order to serve those who had no means to visit the hospitals. She
would diagnose and prescribe medicines but deep inside her she would pray for
the healing of her patients. “I will always look back with gratitude to that
time when my friends led me to discover God in my life,” she exclaimed.
Faith, as a response to God, is necessarily personal. It cannot be vicarious. But almost always, we seldom realize, we come
to an encounter with God not on our own strength and capacity but through the
help of other people, of our family or friends who are there to lead us or just
support us when we are yet weak. While
God waits for our personal response to Him, He does recognize the faith of the
community to where we belong and allows that faith to work “miracles” in awakening
our own faith.
In today’s gospel reading (Mk 2: 1-12), we hear the story of
a paralytic whom Jesus forgives and cures on account of the faith of his
friends: While He was delivering God’s word to them, some people arrived
bringing a paralyzed man to him. The four who carried him were unable to bring
him to Jesus because of the crowd, so they began to open up the roof over the
spot where Jesus was. When they had made a hole, they let down the mat on which
the paralytic was lying. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed
man, “My son, your sins are forgiven.”
A paralyzed man could not, by himself, approach Jesus who
was surrounded by a crowd who, perhaps, were pushing and shoving to get near
him. Surely, he needed people to carry
him to Jesus. Blessed was this man who
had with him some committed friends who were ready to do just everything to
allow him that life-changing encounter with the Lord. On many other healing
occasions, Jesus required the faith of the person. In this particular event, Jesus was moved by
the faith of the friends. So, “when Jesus saw their faith,” He forgave him and made him whole again.
People are spiritually paralyzed by sin. This generation has
been so inured by the gross immoralities around that it has lost its sense of
sin. All the more that people do not care about their spiritual life. This is
paralysis. The gospel then is an invitation for many of us to cultivate such
“faith of the friends” of the paralytic and be able to embark on a mission to reach
out to those who cannot approach the Lord on their own.
Cultivating in us the faith of the paralytic’s friends may
entail, among many others, two things:
Acquiring empathy and developing committed action.
The faith of the friends certainly was characterized by
empathy. This is sensitivity to the
needs of the paralyzed friend who is unable to act on his own. Oftentimes, we are consumed by our own
spiritual needs; we fail to understand the struggle of people around us. We don’t see that people around us could use
our support. Developing empathy
increases our capacity to see beyond our own needs. This allows us to understand the needs of
other people and so to put aside our own agenda and take on as our own those of
others who silently cry for support.
Clearly a faith characterized by empathy leads to committed
action. The friends of the paralytic did
not give up and leave him when they were confronted with the crowd that barred
them to Jesus. On the contrary, they
looked for ways and means to bring their friend to Jesus. Faith without action is dead. When Jesus “saw their faith,” it was their
commitment to act on behalf of their paralyzed friend that amazed the Lord. We need to develop in us this commitment to
act lest our promised prayers for friends who are in need of our support are in
fact our way of escaping from the call to do something.
Who may be that paralyzed friend whose needs silently beg for
our empathy and whose helplessness asks for our commitment to act on his behalf?
Who is out there whom we can lead to have a life-changing encounter with the
forgiving God?
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