Sunday 7 (B-2006): The Dowry

Mark 2:1-12

This Gospel reading puts no word in the paralytic’s mouth. What might have been his story had he spoken? Perhaps it might have gone something like this ...

I am lying in a half-dark room, listening to the noises of the morning. My wife has been up since 4am, sewing and spinning to earn us a few pennies.

Her earnestness and complaint-free attitude both comfort and humiliate me. My paralysis has made her more agile. She is the bread-winner; I am ... well, the loser, except, that is, for her loving devotion.

Our two daughters would fill me with delight, as they do my wife, if I were not so ashamed that I can give no dowry for them.

The accident that deprived me of mobility deprived me also of my only son and of the capacity to have more.

His name was Integrity.

God has cursed me.

I dare not even think of my sins. I feel that Sin is my name.

I stare at the ceiling all day, sometimes wishing it would fall in and finish me off; other times, when my wife’s sweetness cheers me, I wish the Most High would tear it open and make me new again.

The silence of the women around me is itself like another paralysis, as if empathizing with my inaction and the acid bitterness of my soul.

This tedium has been strangling me now for some twenty years.

News of this or that magical cure has become part of the humdrum. So-called healers cheat their way into the homes and the almost empty purses of bums like me only to steal and make misery even more miserable.

Yhwh’s curse be upon them!

Now the neighbors are chattering about some guy from Nazareth, wherever that is, as if he were Yhwh himself.

The crowds follow him everywhere, they say.

Yea, and probably right into the arms of the Roman soldiers, I say.

Four of the neighbors are insisting they’ll take me to see him – but not if I can help it!

Their names are Faith, Hope, Charity and Prayer.

They have no chance of breaking this miserable routine of self-pity I am in: this is my destiny, this is my identity.

Now I hear my wife, Patience, talking animatedly with my daughters, Perseveria and Humilia.

I sense something is afoot.

And whose are those men’s voices?

With my customary raw yell, I demand attention. Suddenly there is silence, and all seven process gingerly in.

It is a conspiracy.

My reaction is violent, so much so that I feel I might even be able to move.

“Absolutely not!” I blast at them. “Can’t you leave a miserable man in peace? Have I become such a burden to you that you must expose my disgrace to a crowd of people and to yet another fake wonder-worker? How much does this one want anyway?”

My Patience weeps.

My Perseveria pleads with me undaunted.

My Humilia stands ever so still.

But Faith, Hope, Charity and Prayer take a firm hold of my stretcher.

With all my strength focused on my throat I howl in protest, cursing the day I was born, cursing the heavens and the earth, cursing them all.

The ceiling above me is now the blue sky.

The sunlight at first blinds me, but as my cold, dark eyes open up to it, I gasp at the beauty of the zenith.

My home-town, Capernaum, is on the Sea of Galilee, so I hear clearly the cries of the gulls which had been muffled before.

I hear the noise of the sea and smell its smells.

The breeze caresses my stony face.

I can see the upper floors of some houses, with their plants, their open windows and their curious faces looking at me, some scowling and disdainful.

It has been twenty years.

I have hidden my shame, but maybe I have made it worse in doing so.

Maybe the sunlight and the fresh air could have eased my pain.

Maybe ... there is indeed still hope.

As these thoughts pass through my mind, I grow silent and secretly glad that I have been overtaken by a conspiracy of virtue.

After all, the Nazarene charges nothing, they tell me, so what harm can he do?

But my optimism soon gives way to agitation and anger when we come to where the Nazarene is.

Typical!

People like him always have to have an audience.

Can’t be ordinary.

Always looking for applause.

“You can’t get in”, I hear people bark resentfully, “there are more important people than you wanting in to see him.”

These cheap shots combine with my embarrassment at being humped around like a bag of rocks.

“Take me home!” I demand in as loud a whisper as won’t turn heads.

But before I know it, ropes are being tied around me to keep me from falling off the stretcher.

I can hear Faith and Perseveria shooing people away from the steps up to the roof.

By this point, I am so mortified that paralysis hits my mouth.

Hope and Patience keep whispering, “just hold on and you’ll see what will happen.” I am not exactly in a position to do anything else!

The next thing I hear is a scraping noise.

“Wait!” says Prayer, “not there! Over here! Keep pulling and they’ll come off! I can hear him more clearly under these tiles. He must be under here!”

I am aghast when I realize that the ceiling I had so often wanted to fall on top of me might now very well fall under me ... and on top of this unsuspecting Nazarene, but with me close behind!

If it were possible, I freeze even further. I cannot wish to be further away.

Then, in front of the gaping crowd, Faith, Hope, Charity and Prayer slowly lower me down, not without some hairy moments and outraged comments, in front of the Nazarene.

There is silence, a pregnant silence, one of those silences you could cut with a knife.

At first, I don’t know which one is the so-called miracle-worker. They all look like normal human beings to me.

Then, from the side of my eye, I see one of them glance back up to the roof. I am sure it is the owner of the house wanting to let rip.

Instead, I hear him whisper to himself something about the faith of my neighbors.

This same guy leans forward and looks me in the eye.

Then I know.

He is the Nazarene.

His look at first puzzles me, then it enthralls me, then it frightens me, then it fills me with a deep, deep peace which I feel like a creeping warmth in my soul and in my very bones.

I feel helpless before him, but it is an empowering helplessness.

I feel vulnerable, but it is a reassuring vulnerability.

In that gaze, I know he knows me more deeply than I know myself.

I realize he loves me.

I realize I trust him and .... yes, despite myself, I believe in him.

Then he says to me those words which have become more deeply embedded in my soul than the earliest monosyllables of childhood or the most intimate confidences of the matrimonial bed.

He says, “Child, your sins are forgiven.”

I fill up.

I feel reborn, my soul as clear as the sky I could see from where I lay.

Yhwh had heard my prayer and broken through the ceiling I had put over my soul.

I know I am now no longer called Sin but Forgiven.

Through all this I do not notice what the Nazarene is arguing about with the others.

All I know is that the power his word had to renew my soul was now going for my body.

“Arise!” he commands.

It had been twenty years!

But my body, as my soul, cannot resist his word.

I have to let go of the security of my stretcher, and of the identity, the destiny, it gave me.

In a flash, I realize that the 4am rising of my wife, that the absence of a dowry for my daughters, need now be no more.

As I have arisen in the forgiveness of my sins, so now I arise in the restoration of my body.

I am resurrected to a new life, to the rediscovery of my truest identity.

I turn to the Nazarene, too filled up to say a word. But my eyes say to him, “Thank you, Jesus of Nazareth, my Lord and my God!”

And his eyes say to me, “I have loved you with an everlasting love. Go ... and sin no more.”

The crowd is astonished.

I am astonished.

Arm in arm with Faith, Hope, Charity and Prayer, with Patience, Perseveria and Humilia ... you too can be astonished.

And forgiven.

Msgr. Peter Magee

Sunday February 19^th, 2006

Annunciation, DC: 5.30 pm Vigil & 11.30 am