Today’s Gospel: Matthew 9:1-8
There was a stretch of time in my life where I found myself confessing the same sin, over and over again. No matter how many times I was forgiven, I was not convinced it was true. In a sense, my sin had paralyzed me. One night my parish had a visiting priest come to give a talk on reconciliation, and afterwards, he offered confession. I told him this sin of mine. Not the original sin, but the sin of not believing I was forgiven. And at the end of our time together, nearly an hour, I looked out the church hall window and discovered it had begun to snow. Huge, white flakes were dancing in the sky and falling gently to the ground, and the priest smiled at me and said, “Now go! You are brand new, white as snow; it is your baptism day!”
I will never forget that moment. I will never forget my parish community that carried me, paralyzed, to confession. And I will never forget the grace I felt poured upon me; that amazing moment I felt that I was right there with Jesus, that I believed I was forgiven. No longer paralyzed, able to move forward, ready to share the good news.
Sin does that to us, you know. It keeps us right there, in the dark, on the stretcher. It tries so hard to convince us there is no moving forward, that we are not worthy of healing. But we can move forward, and we are never too ill to be cured. If you are too stuck to move yourself, I promise, there is someone out there who will pick you up and carry you. Do not lose faith. Take it from me, a hopeless sinner, who has been forgiven, who was blanketed in the whitest of snows, who picked up her stretcher and found her way home.
