Forgiveness

Matthew 9: 2 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.”

Commentary:

Sins have a way of weighing us down physically, emotionally, and spiritually, causing a paralysis, and preventing us from moving towards healthy relationships. I have found my relationships are most healthy when my relationship with Christ is healthy. God has shown me one important practice for a healthy relationship with Christ is participating frequently in the sacrament of confession. I had spent 12 years away from the confessional, and as I look back on those years, my relationships were very unhealthy. I can now attribute the lack of health in those relationships to my attachment to sexual sin, the lack of faith in Christ power to heal and forgive sin, and the diseased attitudes and beliefs that came with sin. When I returned to the confessional, and I heard those words of absolution from the priest, “Child, your sins are forgiven,” and “have courage, with God’s love and mercy, he can and will set you free from your attachment to sin”. I was then able to “rise and walk and go home”, and I began to grow in faith that the “Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”, and that authority has been granted to the priest in the confessional.