A reflection on the daily readings, for the Monday of the Second Week of Advent, by Father Perry.
+ “Our God will come to save us,” says the word of the Lord today.
And that salvation will come in so many ways and so many forms: “the desert and parched land will exult”; and “blooming and flowers galore”; and “they will see God’s glory and splendor”; and “hands and knees and eyes and ears and knuckles will become strong”; and “even the animals will respect the Holy Way, this “Highway of God.”
The coming of the Lord is not “just another day.”
This is the event, the moment, the day, the “we’ve never seen anything like this before” time!
“Our God will come to save us.”
+ And then Jesus takes it to the deepest depths of the human spirit in his healing of the paralyzed man.
In the most dramatic healing moment of Jesus’ many miracles, a man is literally dropped through the roof of the house in which Jesus was preaching.
Desperate! Paralyzed!
They couldn’t get in to see Jesus, but the paralyzed man would not accept that.
“Drop me through that roof. I will see him!”
And so they did.
But Jesus did the parallel to a root canal.
He went deep, deep, deep to what all considered the root of illness — sin!
And even now we can say that sin is that way down deep condition in our lives that is both cause and effect to so much spiritual and eventually human illness and pain in this world.
It’s the deep stuff like: hatred, revenge, and “I can’t/won’t forgive”; and selfishness, inequality, injustice, prejudice, and every form of ugliness that is possible.
And so deep, deep, deep, Jesus healed the sin; he forgave the sin. He released the man from the sin!
And when some of those scribes and Pharisees objected and questioned “who he thought he was to forgive sin — only God could do that!” Jesus made the God connection right there and then.
“But that you might know” the power that is here in your midst.
Right now, right here, he said in so many words: “Get up. Get up. Get up and go home. You are healed!”
It is Advent. It is the celebration of the coming of the Lord into our lives deeper, deeper, deeper.
Call it a rebirth!
And our response — we can hope — is the Advent cry: “Come, Lord Jesus. Come!”
Father Perry D. Leiker is the 13th pastor of St. Bernard Catholic Church. Reach him at (323) 255-6142. Email Father Perry at pleiker@stbernard-church.com. Follow Father Perry on Twitter: @MrDeano76.
