+In the Name…

“And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘My son, your sins are forgiven’” (St. Mark 2:5).

As we near the end of the third season the Church year, Epiphany (with just two days remaining in it before Ash Wednesday), we have a wonderful Gospel passage before us this morning, which Providentially is connected to a wonderful event sacramental that will occur after this sermon – the baptisms of Bronwyn Beth, William David, and Trevor Llewellyn Livezey.  Is there a Welsh connection here?

I want to comment on these Baptisms first.  For me this morning, I’ve let go of my concern and (yes, I confess) a bit of pride about my Baptismal record: that of baptizing many children over the past 34 years in many different places with only one of them crying!  I don’t anticipate (I pray I am right) that none of three candidates for Baptism will spoil my near-perfect record.  But that’s surely not to be the issue of importance for me.

I do thankfully think about the thing that is important, rather than any “batting average,” that Holy Baptism is so wonderful because it’s about newness – a new beginning; a new beginning that is essential; a new beginning that is given by God alone.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church instructs us that Holy Baptism is about “Grace.”  In the Catechism we read:  “The different effects of Baptism are signified by the perceptible elements of the sacramental rite.  Immersion in water symbolizes not only death and purification, but also regeneration and renewal.  Thus the two principal effects are purification from sins and new birth in the Holy Spirit” (1262).

There is a very full explanation in the Catechism on these “two principal effects” (which I urge you to read, or to recall from our Catechetical classes); but suffice it to say, when one is baptized, that person dies to the old, and is born to the new.  He or she (whether he or she is an adult or a child) becomes a new person.  The three who will be baptized this morning will be “born again.”

The baptismal font symbolizes by its shape the womb of Mother Church, through which new children break forth from the amniotic fluid of original sin by the Death and Resurrection of Christ in the sanctified waters of Baptism.

Something ontological and metaphysical happens in the Rite of Holy Baptism that propels the person baptized from one spiritual place to another; and the place to where the person is propelled is where he or she needs to be for salvation.  It’s about the movement from sin to regeneration through the efficacy of a sacrament.

Remember that Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God” (St. John 3:5).  This is what we will do this morning in the Name of Christ who, as one of the Eucharistic Prayers states it near its culmination, is “the firstborn of all creation, the head of the Church, and the author of our salvation.”

What we will we do is very much connected to the Gospel passage for this Sunday.

It is the story of the man plagued with physical paralysis who was healed by Jesus.  This miraculous healing of this man came about, as we are taught in this Gospel passage, because the man was released from sin.  Jesus was saying, in this instance, that the sickness was inextricably connected to this man being in a state of sin.

Most of you may be well aware that in our Lord’s time, it was common belief that sickness of mind, body, or spirit was believed to be the direct result of sin.  Jesus did not want to perpetuate this belief because He did not in any way want people to assume that this always was the case.  A perfect example of this is in the Gospel according to St. John where Jesus tells the people that a man born blind was not in his state of blindness for any sin of his parents or of his own, but “that the works of God might be made manifest in him” (St. John 9:3).

But, in the situation before us this morning, it was the sin of this man (whatever it was) that was the source of his paralysis; so Jesus the Healer remedies it in forgiving this man of his sins in order to usher in his physical healing.  He demonstrates that He has both the power to forgive sin (because He is God Incarnate) and that He has the power to heal; and in this particular situation, the healing of the man was dependent upon his being forgiven.  In other words, he was paralyzed by sin which had manifested itself in physical paralysis.  What an important factor this is for us as we soon enter the holy season of Lent, which is very much about repentance and forgiveness in order to be in that place in which God yearns for us to be.  In the words of Pope Benedict XVI, which I quoted in my midweek website message, Lent is a call to “abandon the old man that is in us and to clothe ourselves with Christ” – clothe ourselves in His forgiveness which brings us to greater wholeness and spiritual health and well-being, free from anything that paralyzes and plagues us from being what Christ the Second Adam brings and bestows.

Notice in the Gospel story this morning that it was when Jesus saw the effort and faith of the four men that lowered the paralytic through the roof before Him – that being the only way, because of the crowd, that they could get their friend before Jesus, that we learn: “And when Jesus saw their [my emphasis] faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘My son, your sins are forgiven.’”

These four men, through their physical efforts and with their spiritual hope for their friend, were the intercessors for him.  It was because of their act of intervention and intercession that their friend was forgiven and healed.  Their good works brought unto their friend forgiveness and healing.  Is this not a Gospel truth of and a mandate for the place of devoted and loving intercession for others, and what the results have the promise of being?  So we must be constant in our prayers and care for others – bringing the persons and persons we love to Jesus, trusting that He will respond to our love and desire for them.

Now back for a moment to the relationship between this and the Baptisms which I soon will administer and which you will be called upon to celebrate and support.

Three young people of varying ages will be cleansed from sin, and have planted within them the Holy Spirit, so that they be temples of the Same.  In the words and teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:  “enabling them to believe in God, to hope in him, and to love him through the theological virtues; giving them the power to love and act under the prompting of the Holy Spirit through the gifts of the Holy Spirit; allowing them to grow in goodness through the moral virtues” (1266).  This is what will be given and received by God’s mighty power of grace and His action of reaching out to give and draw three persons to Himself now and for all eternity.  This is what we pray that they will always appropriate.

There are no words that are adequate to express what God is about and what He does.  So, we simply claim Him as who He is, and respond to what He does with awe and thanksgiving.  This is our calling and our privilege.

God be praised for all He is this day and forevermore.

+In the Name…