A Gospel according to Mt 9:1-8
After entering a boat, Jesus made the crossing, and came into his own town.
And there people brought to him a paralytic lying on a stretcher.
When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic,
“Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.”
At that, some of the scribes said to themselves,
“This man is blaspheming.”
Jesus knew what they were thinking, and said,
"Why do you harbor evil thoughts?
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 then said to the paralytic,
“Rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.”
He rose and went home.
When the crowds saw this they were struck with awe
and glorified God who had given such authority to men.
REFLECTION:
"Why do you harbor evil thoughts?"
When we read passages like this, I often think "Well, look at them, full of envy and arrogance". Or "They were seeing all the good things Jesus was doing, and still, they refused to believe! They refused Him!"
We also act all "righteous" and "judgy" when we don't like someone.
As a society, we started a few decades ago a phenomenon called "call-out culture", or boycott. Where we stop giving support to someone that does things against societal norms.
As of the last few years, we have reached something that is called "cancel culture" where we completely ostracize something or someone completely out of social or professional circles. This behavior greatly differs from accountability. The former Secretary of Labor, Eugene Scalia wrote a piece describing how phenomenon could interfere with the right to counsel because lawyers would not risk their careers defending a persona non-grata.
It is very easy to fall into this trapping. We are very fast to judge and try to rapidly punish someone that says or does something considered wrong. We want immediate consequences on those people.
And we keep thinking, that it only applies to "those" people. It never applies to me.
We live in a hyper connected society, where every keystroke we type, every block we walk or drive, every phone call we make is backed up and recorded somewhere. Let me tell you, we should not be so cocky thinking it is just "them" doing wrong. We all have a secret in our life that could ruin our marriage, our careers, our friendships, our families, our lives...
Something we might have done while in high school or college could easily surface and be rapidly publicized in social media.
We need to stop looking at what others are doing or did, and think deep inside ourselves and recognize our own faults. We need to ask God for the grace to recognize these faults, and help us change our own behaviors.
Today we celebrate the Optional Memorial of St. Junipero Serra, the Franciscan missionary to the New World, especially California.
Over the last few years his statues have been vandalized, painted all in red, and/or with graffiti, toppled, and even decapitated. All this was done in very public places, and no suspects were ever found or arrested.
This hatred of St. Junipero and the Church is ignited because of ignorance of true history, and aggravated by lies that many people believe are truths.
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