| FROM THE SERVANT GENERAL MODERNISM (PART 64) |
| HEALING OF THE PARALYTIC December 11, 2023 Today’s gospel: Luke 5:17-26 Today we read about Jesus healing a paralytic. There was both physical and spiritual healing. For the authentic healing hand of God, the two aspects need to come together. Modernists in the Church today however look only to the physical, material, social. Oftentimes, the spiritual is ignored or downplayed. The focus of modernists is on man rather than on God. Put another way, modernists look to God for the healing of man and of society but not to the needed restoration of man with God. God then just becomes a means to an end that is focused on man. Modernists have it backward.Consider the following realities today.Modernists call for accompaniment and acceptance of sinners but not for repentance for their sins.Modernists look to human fraternity but not to a more narrow brotherhood only in Christ.Modernists assert that human fulfillment lies in being a sincere gift to others rather than about the love of God.Modernists approve of same-sex unions rather than upholding authentic heterosexual love and God-ordained marriage between man and woman.Modernists approve giving Holy Communion to those in irregular unions without need for repentance and change of life.Modernists deny the existence of hell and the reality of eternal punishment for grievous unrepented sin, to focus on life just in the here and now.Modernists include everyone, including unrepentant sinners and even atheists, in the communion of saints, rather than accepting that the communion of saints is precisely that, a communion made up only of saints. So the friends of the paralytic looked to Jesus healing their friend. The Pharisees and teachers of the law were looking to ways they could criticize his acts of healing. Jesus confounded them all by instead forgiving the paralytic his sins. Then he made the paralyzed man walk. They were all astounded. The Pharisees found another point of criticism and could not see the connection between physical and spiritual healing. If we want physical healing for all the ills of man and the world, we must look to spiritual healing first and foremost. God, out of love for us, does look to heal us of our physical and material infirmities, but most of all to heal us of our sins. God is not a modernist who looks to physical healing while neglecting the more important spiritual healing. Be made right with God, then everything else follows. * * * |
