+ Hope and determination seem like a perfect couple — that is, when we have hope, receive hope, and find hope, are given hope, and discover hope.
However, it is that it comes alive in us.
The next thing we need to discover within, and stoke the fires of so that it becomes a raging burn, is those fires of determination!
That is what happened to the paralytic in today’s Gospel.
Who was the determined one in the story?
Was it the paralyzed man himself, those who carried the stretcher on which he lay, or both?
The story does not reveal that. Whoever it was, someone or people filled with hope and determination would not allow that wall of people, that crowded crowd, to keep him out.
So someone or several people must have shouted out, “If we can’t get through that wall, then we will come down through the roof. Up onto the roof. Let’s go!”
And “let’s go” is exactly what they did.
They tore off a portion of the roof and let that stretcher carrying the paralytic down in front of Jesus.
What audacity; what gumption!
But Jesus said — or at least thought: “What faith!”
But Jesus went further.
He went to the considered source of all suffering and brokenness — sin!
As he uttered the words, “Your sins are forgiven,” he once again shocked the scribes and Pharisees as they “clutched their pearls” and complained that Jesus uttered blasphemies.
Jesus, in that moment, took that moment to teach and heal profoundly.
With one simple question he took everyone to a new place, asking, “Which is easier to say, ‘your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘rise and walk’?”
And remember, to do or to say can be very different matters.
Obviously, and especially in this case, to do was at the very least supremely miraculous.
And he did it — the man got up and walked (or maybe danced) — all the way home.
Shock, amazement, and astonishment!
All of the above? Yes, me thinks!
But did those non-believers — especially those scribes and Pharisees — find faith, hope, and love that day?
Did they see those messianic hope-filled promises, promises, promises alive and happening right before their eyes?
Could they hear Isaiah singing these truths and hopes right into their ears?
Doubtful, indeed. But that is what Advent, too, is all about — remembering those words and promises in Isaiah.
It is Psalm 85 being sung into our ears and our hearts, “Our God will come to save us, and our God is coming, right now, and always, to save us!”
And for these four weeks of Advent, we prepare through story after story to awaken in us such awareness of all the Christ did and said in our story of salvation, so that when we celebrate his birth on Christmas, we are evermore filled with faith and determination.
Not unlike that man and his companions who could not get through the wall.
Nothing and no one could stop them from going up on that roof and dropping him down from the heavens through that roof before the very presence of the Lord!
Father Perry Dean Leiker is the 13th pastor of St. Bernard Catholic Church. Reach him at (323) 255-6142. Email Father Perry at pleiker@stbernard-church.com.
