Jesus Christ Cures the Paralytic
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7 March 1989
Paris, France

My dear Sisters,

I am sure some of you here this morning have entertained sympathy for the paralytic in this morning's Gospel. He had spent, remarks St. John, no less than thirty-eight years waiting for his turn to reach the pool of water after the angel had touched it with healing power. Perhaps there are some of you here who have been waiting that length of time to be invited to come to the Mother House to participate in a Vincentian Session. Now at last you have reached this source of grace, which does so much to heal and strengthen Sisters in their vocation as Daughters of Charity. I have no doubt that there are many Sisters in the provinces who would treasure the experience you have had, but somehow, like the man in today's Gospel, someone else gets to the pool before them.

There is no record in today's Gospel that, after the paralytic had been cured by Our Lord, he thanked his Healer. In fact, he seems to have gone to the leaders of the people and, prudently or imprudently, told them that it was Jesus who had cured him. I would suggest that your final prayer, before leaving the Mother House and its Chapel, be a prayer of thanksgiving to God and His Mother for bringing you into the pool of grace where so many others, like you, have found strength to continue giving themselves to the service and to the healing of the poor.

It is a paralyzed man who lies before Our Lord in this morning's Gospel. Our Lord heals him and later He tells him not to sin again. There would seem to be a certain similarity between paralysis and sin. Was Jesus suggesting to us that sin is a form of paralysis, an inability to feel guilt, an insensitivity to the need of forgiveness from God?

It was Pope Pius XII who said: "The sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin." Paralysis is, according to the dictionary, "a partial inability to move or feel." We could almost define sin as an inability to move and feel with Jesus Christ. The saints are those who developed to the greatest degree the ability to move and feel with Jesus Christ. It is in this that St. Vincent's greatness lies. The saints are those who are least paralyzed by sin. The paralysis of sin is a widespread epidemic today. There are those who will tell us that they are not convinced that abortion or euthanasia or divorce are wrong. Perhaps we do not suffer from that degree of paralysis, but we can suffer from what St. Vincent in the C.M. Common Rules calls "attaching no great importance to either God's honor or the salvation of others." (CR II, 15). We can find ourselves saying that we do not feel the need of the Sacrament of Penance, and that we do not know what sins to confess. All that could be a symptom of a certain spiritual paralysis which is sin.

What therapy can be recommended for the paralysis of sin from which we may suffer? To begin with, it is a good practice at the end of every day to spend some moments thanking God for His goodness to us and reflecting on how we have failed Him and our neighbor during the day. Second, a Christian who can humbly and regularly make an act of faith in the Sacrament of Penance will come to see and feel the presence of sin and imperfection in his life. That experience can be a little painful, but the pain itself is a sign of receding paralysis. When St. Paul wrote to the Romans, he spoke of being "alive with a life that looks towards God through Christ Jesus." (Rom 6:11). Part of the power of the Sacrament of Penance is to make us more alive with the movements and the feelings of Jesus Christ. In the ritual of the Sacrament of Penance the Church suggests to the penitent this prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, reconcile me with your Father by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Wash with Your blood all my faults and make of me a new creature to the praise of Your glory. Amen."

More frequently in recent years we have been referring to the Sacrament of Penance less as confession and more as a Sacrament of Reconciliation. The season of Lent is preeminently the season of reconciliation. If we are paralyzed spiritually to a greater or lesser degree, then it is due to some failure to be reconciled with God, with the Church, with the Community, with ourselves. The Sacrament of Reconciliation can effect for the better our whole experience of living. Pope John Paul II has made that precise point in his apostolic exhortation on Penance and Reconciliation: "It has to be added that this reconciliation with God leads, as it were, to other reconciliations, which repair the breaches caused by sin. The forgiven penitent is reconciled with himself in his inmost being, where he regains his own true identity. He is reconciled with his brethren whom he has in some way attacked and wounded. He is reconciled with the Church. He is reconciled with all creation....Every confessional is a special and blessed place from which, with divisions wiped away, there is born new and uncontaminated a reconciled individual, a reconciled world!" (III, chap. 2, p5).

My dear Sisters, you have come to the end of your Session. I wish you a safe return to your provinces. You have gathered much fruit from this meeting here in the Mother House. May that fruit, to quote the words in the final sentence in this morning's first reading, "be good to eat and the leaves medicinal." (Ez 47:12).

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