2nd JULY. THURSDAY OF WEEK 13

1.Genesis 22:1-19

2.Matthew 9:1-8

REFLECTIONS AND MEDITATIONS

Today we hear from the gospel men who were determined to get their paralyzed friend to Jesus by hook or by crook to Jesus. The crowds around Jesus were too big to an extent that they found it too difficult to get their friend to Jesus. Thus they got up onto the roof of the house and created an opening to lower their friend in front of Jesus. We may ask ourselves a question that how many times do we lower and humble ourselves before the crowd, to allow Jesus to touch inner lives? The crowd of people said in the gospel may be a sign representing various kinds of obstacles that do prevent us from reaching to Jesus, like addictions of various types, Medias, ideological beliefs, political affiliations, and addictions like abuse use of Medias, too much alcoholic consumption, sex and so forth.

True friendship is the kind of friendship that opens up people to the presence of the Lord. The friends of the paralyzed man certainly did that. It was the combination of their friendship and their faith that carried this man to Jesus. The motive behind this was their love to man whom they carried and their faith to Jesus. It is the same calling to each one of us that in our families and communities we have people who have lost their faith, spiritually they are dead, they need to be brought to Jesus in order their faith to be restored, on our part, depending with our pastoral environment, how do we bring back people more especially those who have lost faith to Jesus? Some people have lost hope in the course of their Christian journey because of what happens with the pastors entrusted to lead the church of God, i.e the abuse use of ecclesiastical offices, including rape and pedophilia, thus with this fact for example, we find that some of the Christians have lost faith, in such environment we need to bring these kinds of people back to Jesus though not an easy task.

There are people in our lives, have been separated from us because of their past mistakes, they are not welcomed with a sincere spirit in our lives. In the gospel we hear Jesus telling the paralytic man that his sins were forgiven, and it is under this background that the religious leaders were upset to hear Jesus talking like that; consequently they called it a blasphemy simply because the authority to forgive sins was only reserved to God. Jesus did not only show this authority to forgive sins, but also he revealed the great power of God’s redeeming love and mercy by healing the man who had been paralyzed for a couple of years.

We are all invited heal our brothers and sisters tormented by different afflictions. In the course of our life we have people being tormented by psychological pains for example those living in a broken relationship, those who have been abandoned simply because of their physical disabilities, and those who have been marginalized because of their political and tribal affiliations. Our mission of healing should also be directed to such people who seem to have lost faith and hope. In this account we need to be the voice of the voiceless. Through our good practical examples, we shall bring many who have lost faith to Jesus.