Monday of the 2nd Week of Advent

When a person is paralysed, he or she may not be able to move or do anything on their own, and would require the help of family and friends to attend to their daily needs. Some even suffer from a different form of paralysis, where a person is unable to speak or express oneself clearly and concretely, and may end up being misunderstood or even rejected. This is why being paralysed in one way or another is certainly no laughing matter, since we lose our freedom and independence to care for ourselves, and are at the mercy and generosity of others.

In today's Gospel, we come across a paralysed man who was brought on a stretcher by some men. These men went up on to the flat roof and lowered him and his stretcher down through the tiles into the middle of the gathering, in front of Jesus, as the crowd made it impossible to find a way of getting him in. It was the faith of these men that impressed Jesus and Jesus cured the paralysed man, based on such great faith. The paralysed man may have had faith, but there was no way of telling about the amount of faith he had, since he could not move or express himself. So this paralysed man was lucky and fortunate to have such great friends who had such great faith in Jesus.

Some of us may be suffering from a different kind of paralysis, that is spiritual paralysis. We suffer from spiritual paralysis when we sin and allow ourselves to remain in the state of sin, until we become spiritually paralysed to God's promptings. The cure to such spiritual paralysis is to be regular and consistent in going for confession, and building our relationship with God. The question is: are we willing to be set free from such spiritual paralysis, or do we prefer to remain spiritually paralysed until it is too late?