Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
Father Don Wolf, a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, offers a Catholic perspective on the issues confronting each person today.
Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
"Go Home: Freedom from the Paralysis of Sin" | March 23, 2025
At the heart of this episode is the Gospel story of the paralyzed man, whose friends lowered him through a roof to reach Jesus. Christ's first words—"Your sins are forgiven"—reveal a profound connection between physical brokenness and spiritual restoration. When challenged, Jesus demonstrates his authority by commanding the man to stand, take his mat and go home. This wasn't merely healing; it was complete restoration to family, community and purpose.
While we rightfully avoid blaming the sick for their conditions, we've lost sight of how sin permeates our world, creating ripples of disorder that touch everyone. The paralyzed man's condition perfectly symbolizes what sin does to us spiritually—leaving us immobile, dependent, and disconnected from our true home.
The forgiveness Jesus offers isn't just erasing offenses from a divine ledger; it's breaking the chains of a broken world order that began with humanity's first disobedience. When we receive this healing gift, we must extend it to others, creating a cycle of restoration that gradually heals our fractured relationships and communities.
As we journey through Lent, we're invited to both receive and give this transformative forgiveness that allows us all to "stand up, pick up our mats, and go home" to the lives God intends for us.
• The paralyzed man's story demonstrates Jesus connecting physical healing with spiritual forgiveness
• Modern culture often separates sin and sickness, unlike Jesus who saw them as interconnected
• Jesus didn't just heal the man's body but commanded him to "stand up, pick up your mat and go home"—signifying complete restoration
• Sin resembles paralysis—leaving us frozen, dependent, and unable to move forward spiritually
• Our narrow understanding of sin as merely "breaking rules" misses the deeper reality of how sin infects our world
• Forgiveness must be both received and given—as we pray in the Our Father
• True healing happens when we extend Christ's forgiveness to others, completing the restoration cycle
Next week, we'll explore the sacrament of reconciliation and how we can build bridges of forgiveness according to Church teaching.
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Father Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Living Catholic also broadcasts on Oklahoma Catholic Radio several times per week, with new episodes airing every Sunday.
This is Living Catholic with Father Don Wolfe. This show deals with living the Catholic faith in our time, discovering God's presence in our lives and finding hope in His Word. And now your host, father Don Wolfe.
Speaker 2:Welcome Oklahoma to Living Catholic. I'm Father Don Wolfe, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish and rector of the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother. Now that we are in Lent, there is a question that comes to us Actually it's perennial and that is how are your sins forgiven? It's an easy question with a difficult answer, and it's not because the actual response is difficult. It's difficult making the response really work. Why, well? That's what we have to explore. Think of it this way If someone were standing on a cliff overlooking a deep valley and wanted to cross over to get to the cliff on the other side, he could ask how do I get there? And the answer is easy Build a bridge from here to there and then cross over it. The question is straightforward and the response is easy. The tough part is only in the details. It's not easy to build a bridge.
Speaker 2:Getting to forgiveness is also not easy, but of course, we know that through Christ, we have the forgiveness of sins. St Paul testifies to the heart of the faith when he acknowledges that the death of Jesus has brought about the reconciliation between us and God, whatever debt there is because of our offense against the goodness of God. However, we have offended the good order of creation. By our sins against the law of God. We have been reconciled by the blood of Christ In Jesus is our hope. These are the cornerstone beliefs that we have been offered through revelation by the gift of Christ In Jesus is our hope. These are the cornerstone beliefs that we have been offered through revelation by the gift of Christ on the cross.
Speaker 2:One of the best images of this forgiveness offered by Christ is when the paralyzed man is brought to Jesus, carried by his friends, so that Jesus might heal him. Because the crowd is too numerous to allow them to come close, because the crowd is too numerous to allow them to come close, they climb to the ceiling and open a hole there and let their friend down on his mat in front of Jesus. After this commotion, as he addresses the man who now lies before him, he tells him that his sins are forgiven. This results in a contest of opinions, since only God can forgive sins. So Jesus quickly discerns the anxiety of those in the crowd and responds with the line that you may know that the Son of man has power to forgive sins. I command you, stand up, pick up your mat and go home. The paralyzed man stands up, picks up his mat and leaves, and everyone is, of course, astounded.
Speaker 2:This story encapsulates several themes about forgiveness, and the first one is that there is the immediate connection between the brokenness of this man, his suffering and dependence, with the brokenness of our sinful world. When Jesus looked at him being paralyzed and being sinful, they were connected, and so healing the paralysis was also healing the breach of his sin. We have a hard time thinking in these terms, so we often don't feel the connection that Jesus was making. In our world, sin and sickness are not connected directly. We even make sure to admonish people to think they are. This is something to explore, but for now it's sufficient to note that in Jesus's mind they were simply one.
Speaker 2:Jesus healed the paralyzed man at his command. We should notice, however, that he didn't simply tell him to get off his pallet and stand up. That would have been miracle enough, even by our standards. Jesus wasn't content that the man's synapses resumed functioning, so the command signals from his brain and spinal cord could command his muscles to contract and loosen in sequence so that he could slowly rise from his paralyzed state and stand amid all those who were standing Again. Healing whatever was broken in the function of his nervous system is miracle enough in any age, and we who have not yet mastered this kind of healing in our technology are still rightly impressed by this healing. Jesus does what no hospital or therapy or doctor is able to do anywhere in the world in our time. But it's not the only thing he did, because he didn't just heal the paralyzed man, he restored him. Jesus' command was that he stand up, pick up his mat and then go home. That was something much more powerful in everyone's hearing than simply healing. It was the command that this man be restored to the life he once knew. He was, to go home, where he belonged, where his life was sustained and nurtured, where he had his family, where his hearth was. We, of course, have no information about the circumstance of his paralysis, whether it was an accident, an illness or a congenital condition. What we do know is that he was helpless when he arrived and he was restored when he returned. Jesus healed his life, not just his spine, but he also healed his soul. If we're to take Jesus' words seriously, his first offer was to forgive his sins.
Speaker 2:We turn away from this interpretation. In our age, when we hear Jesus' words, it sounds like Jesus is insisting that the paralysis is caused by the sinful behavior of the man who has been struck down. The narrowest interpretation would be that because of his who knows dissolute behavior or some wretched temptation he gave into that somehow his body has ceased to function correctly and he was left paralyzed. Or perhaps because of what he had decided one night he'd done something that caused an accident or resulted in some situation in which he was left paralyzed. Whatever happened, there was a connection between his inability to function and his sins, and Jesus wanted to restore him to the fullness of life, so he wanted to forgive his sins. We stay away from these interpretations because it makes it sound like sickness and sin go together in unhealthy ways. That is, we would end up blaming people who are sick for their sickness, as if what they suffered from was the product of their decisions. And while lots of sickness is in fact the results of bad decisions and faulty behavior, not all of them are In fact, maybe not most of them are. In order to protect the innocent, we don't make the connection Jesus made. We don't presume a man, paralyzed, supinely dependent on his friends, helpless in his condition, is suffering from his sins. We don't ask ourselves what he's done wrong, we ask what wrong has been done to him.
Speaker 2:When I was in college, I began dating a young woman who was a brittle diabetic. She had lots of trouble controlling her diabetes for lots of complicated reasons. That became clearer much later on. But staying healthy was hard for her and she'd suffered from her condition. In the course of her time there she became involved with a small church that was very focused on its healing ministry and the laying on of hands. It was natural, I suppose, that she would gravitate to such a group and besides, they were very welcoming and in the course of familiarizing herself with the group, they prayed over her and asked for the gift of her healing to be poured out on her. It was very scriptural and very impressive, especially given the testimony and experience of so many people in the church there.
Speaker 2:But she didn't get better. There were bouts of improvement, but she always ended up back in the hospital, continually struck down by the complications of her condition, and their response wasn't very helpful. Eventually they began to blame her for being sick. Her diabetes and her blood sugar control problems were all her fault as far as they were concerned. For them, if the Lord can't heal you, it's just your fault. Needless to say, they weren't very helpful and it was especially devastating to hear that sickness is your fault, no matter what happens, no matter all your efforts and no matter all your prayers. That's what we stay away from.
Speaker 2:When we view the man lying paralyzed upon his mat, we don't want to blame him for being there. We even bend over backwards, not to say much directly, when someone is disabled and sick because of what he's done and through his choices in life. Even when there is a direct causal connection to the foolishness of a person's choices and his condition, we mostly focus on the condition and let the connections surface only in the back rooms of our thinking and talking. This was highlighted during the growing anxiety about AIDS several generations ago, in which everyone who even began to suspect connecting behavior to outcome was shamed as uncaring and thoughtless. At the height of publicity and public awareness, it was thought to be discriminatory and uncouth even to mention the most direct ways to avoid infection, much less to demand it. But this episode highlighted what was embedded in our culture. We don't think it appropriate to imagine disordered behavior or poor choices to be constitutive parts of how to relate to someone who's sick. We're conditioned to focus on the sickness and nothing else.
Speaker 2:So we have a hard time hearing Jesus' words concerning forgiveness. It seems he's forgiving what has not yet been demonstrated. He's addressing a problem not yet in evidence. All he knows, and all we know, is that this man is paralyzed. What he may or may not have done in his life is unclear, and yet Jesus offers forgiveness to his sins. Not only that, he offers to make a demonstration of the forgiveness of sins that is spectacular and undeniable, that is, rather than this man clutching his chest, folding his hands and then bowing to Jesus as signs that he has been made right with God. All of those signs are unclear, symbolic and facile. Instead, though, he stands up with all of the chains of disability and paralysis broken. This is a miracle in which Jesus is willing to assume the most responsibility for its overt effectiveness.
Speaker 2:It's not what we usually think of when we imagine what forgiveness is, but if we pause to consider that sin is something more than merely an offense against the will of God written into the goodness of creation, startlingly, we have a sense of sin in this manner, in that every person knows that there are things forbidden in life, boundaries about behavior. It is understood that people are not to transgress. Cs Lewis mentioned this in his book Mere Christianity as a demonstration of what he called the Tao. It's the notion of life written into the heart in which, it seems, every person has some sense of. It appears we are fine-tuned to the details of life and community so that we know there are offenses against these we should not commit. It's not always that we're kind and loving to one another, but that, no matter our situation, we all know we should do some things and avoid others. It may be that we belong to a tribe in which there are feuds and retribution, in which everyone's caught up in killing and violence, but even then there's a sense of honor, a sense that certain things are right and just, that there is a balance that shouldn't be disturbed and when disturbed, should be righted. We know from the moment the light of consciousness begins to glow there are things we shouldn't do.
Speaker 2:Yet we have a hard time defining this sense. We can name what must not be done, but we have a hard time naming the sense of it. In previous ages we called it conscience. It was as if a foreign voice were speaking to us to guide and to correct us. Today, in our common conversation, we have virtually abandoned this word, and we almost never speak of forming the consciences of our young people. It's a word that has lost its common agreed understanding and so it's not used its common agreed understanding, and so it's not used.
Speaker 2:In fact, our talk about sin has slipped into imagining. It is only the violation of specific written laws about which we agree to. The innate experience of wrongdoing and the subsequent guilty awareness that accompanies it is not spoken of, in fact it is denied In our society. We seldom speak of sin. We substitute breaking the law instead. Most often, we don't even have a vocabulary for sinfulness, and so we seldom think in these terms, which leaves us practically mute when facing the words of Jesus. We don't know what he's talking about. So we feel odd when we read the exchange between these two.
Speaker 2:But the sense of sin in Jesus' world is different than our own. In fact it's much more sensitive than ours. When Jesus looks at the paralyzed man, he doesn't only see someone who's suffering from a debilitating condition, he also sees someone who embodies the brokenness of the world. In paradise there would be no paralysis and no pains like he's experiencing. This man wouldn't have to seek healing and he wouldn't have to live pityingly dependent on his friends as if he were in Eden. If the world were whole, he'd have a wife and children and make his living and provide for everyone, defined by sufficiency and happiness.
Speaker 2:But he suffers most of all from a world that has gone dark and dangerous. His sin is part of the larger sin suffusing every part of the world he was born into. Think of it as an infection or a whirlpool. Exposure to it leaves the person helpless in the face of it. He's dragged down by it, often against his will. Also, his disability has affected everyone in his life. Being disabled, he has to live dependent on the work and the help of others. Unless they were present to him, his life would not go on and what there was of it would be pure misery. But what it takes to care for him burdens all those around him. In a world of bare sufficiency, caring for one another and providing for his needs, especially as an adult man, would be taxing for everyone. Every person in his web of relationship is affected, is broken in some sense by his paralysis. It's easy to imagine the decision his friends made to carry him to Jesus so that he could be healed and their decision to make sure Jesus could register his need by lowering him through the ceiling. They had an investment in his healing, but they were also limited in their options and affected by their service to him. The world was darker for them because of the limitations put on them by caring for him. The brokenness of the world passes on from person to person, breaking them in turn, and this sense of sin touches everyone.
Speaker 2:When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, the good order of creation was undone and they suffered the consequences of this disorder. In the story, the immediate result was that they had to leave the garden, the place of protection and order, and go out into the world. And it all comes undone. Cain kills his brother Abel. The world spirals down into killing and viciousness. Even the norm established in the garden for a couple one man with one woman is undone almost immediately. The end of chapter 4 of Genesis describes the character Lamech, who boasts that I have killed a man for wounding me, a boy for bruising me. Cain's descendant has become a serial killer with no remorse.
Speaker 2:Disorder is everywhere and only gets worse and worse. There's no natural limit to what people can choose to do. Disorder heaps on disorder until everything has become twisted and crooked. The truly frightening part is when the human ability to create a small portion of order in a disordered world is used to leverage disorder to its highest notch. Our contemporary examples are sufficient the genius and patience for surgery has now been captured to lop off body parts and reshape them in pursuit of those who want to disorder their bodies in the shape of the opposite sex. And all of this because the conviction there are those whose lives and feelings don't match their expectations. Amazing computer power, unimaginable in its sophistication, is harnessed to surveil and control those whose opinions are disfavored. And this is because there are those who want to overthrow and disrupt and murder. And the greatest breakthroughs in material science and thermodynamics are pressed into service to build the fastest and most lethal bombers and bombs, because someone else built bigger bombs and faster planes to threaten first, as in a whirlpool, once you're in it, you're in it Thrashing about, only hastens being dragged down by it.
Speaker 2:Sin is woven into the world. It finds its place here and grows here, abetted by every part of what it means to be human, aided by every aspect of the human genius and ability which is the world in which the paralyzed man is touched by disorder and the infection of sin. Of course, like every person, he has himself contributed to disorder and the darkening of the world by his own decisions and actions. Thinking of himself over others, becoming impatient with those who try to love him and help him, nursing resentments against God's goodness and the intentions of other people all these well up in the heart of every man and no doubt flooded his. Jesus didn't have to be the son of God to know what he was thinking and how his thoughts widened the cracks undermining the solidity of his world. We most often think of the individual offenses of a person setting him against God. And it's true. The choice to offend the law of God and the goodness written into creation is to oppose the will of God in the world, and this manifests itself in the disorder of the world, which God did not intend in the creation and which shows itself in every manner of disorder. But it's not like God keeps a list of all the evil we've done. Rather, the sin we commit is a sin against the action of God and shows itself by our conduct as contrary to God's presence.
Speaker 2:In Genesis, chapter 3, when God calls out to Adam, who's hiding from God in the garden because he's eaten of the forbidden fruit. Adam tells him that he's naked and he didn't want to show himself, and God said so. Then you have eaten of the fruit that was forbidden. It wasn't because God had kept a record of everything Adam had done. It was Adam's behavior, his shame, his hiding and his fear to face God that disclosed the sin and disorder he had brought into the world. And against the will of God, there is the sin in the world, there's the sin of the world, and then there are this man's sins. Jesus tells the man to get up. His paralysis is overcome in this miraculous act, but the sins touching his incapacity and the brokenness of the world are also healed and overcome. He isn't just returned to God's good graces, he's restored to the world that will sustain and support him.
Speaker 2:Being forgiven is to be set free from the chains that hold us, whether by the weakness of our limbs or the breakdown of our will. Forgiveness is offered to us so that we might be able to return home to a life in which we can live freely. I don't think it's an accident that the signal story about forgiveness is about a man who's paralyzed. There is no other condition that describes what it's like to be mired in sin better than paralysis being frozen in place, unable to move and unable to care for ourselves. That sounds exactly like what happens when we sin. The brokenness of the world overcomes us and leaves us broken and, being so, we're unable to go anywhere on our own. We have to wait for what others can do for us, which is the message of the gospel.
Speaker 2:God takes the initiative and offers forgiveness to us through Jesus. His message is that the goodness of God is renewed through the gift of Jesus's ministry. God does not simply scratch our name off a list of those who are troubled because of what they've done. God acts to heal the world we're a part of. In Christ, we are returned to the gift of life taken away from us by our world. This is why the gift of forgiveness given to us is only effective if it's passed on to another.
Speaker 2:In the Our Father, we enter into the agreement that God's forgiveness is up to, as we forgive those who trespass against us. To restore us by forgiving others and then having us go into a world in which we continue to pass on brokenness to others is to fall into it ourselves. To be healed is to be part of healing the world. That's why the people, with Jesus, were amazed at what he had done. He had not only connected the man's paralysis with his sin, he healed both. We're not able to command broken bodies to rise, of course, but we can pass on the healing of hearts and souls to those most in need of it. A husband paralyzed by anger and resentment can return home and take up his life by sharing forgiveness with his wife. A brother who has passed a decade in bitterness and pain can return to a time before the offense that hurt him. Those who have been offended by the decisions and heartless actions of others can return to the Eden of order and life, and all of this by first receiving the gift of healing from Jesus, the promise to return to home, and then extending that healing to all those around him.
Speaker 2:Forgiveness is infectious. This is all brought to us by the words of Jesus on the cross, looking across the sea of faces who were turned to the cross as he suffered. Rather than seeing a ravenous crowd, jesus saw a sheep without a shepherd, and his final words to them were forgive them, father. Jesus bore the brokenness of the world in his body, but he saw it also in those who called for his death and his forgiveness was so that they could be healed. To hear forgiveness from the one who has been broken is to find healing amid broken lives, and this is our hope. It's how we get to the other side. Next week, we'll look at the special gift of reconciliation and how we find it according to the church's recommendation. What we'll learn is we'll learn how to build bridges Back in just a moment. Welcome to our final segment, faith in Verse.
Speaker 2:We have a poem today called the Older Rooms. All the older rooms had paneling of dark oak to create the somber mood of more somber folk From days past when serious men lived here, those who built our world and vanquished their fears. They, from simple homes and crowded households, seemed more comfortable in the Lord's own fold and then in surrendered themselves to duty To build these places where I receive now all do me. Dark and foreboding gives way to a lighter conviction that the world is not the sum of hard malediction but instead thrives on the structured, promised freedoms these older men's yeses created best as they could see them. There's a lot to be said for the rooms now past. More we could learn from the architecture that lasts. We might, if attentive, find our own mortared joints and live the liberty their memory now us anoints, that's, the older rooms. This time of Lent is the opportunity when we can turn our hearts and minds more fully to the presence of Christ among us and be prepared for Easter. I hope that we can visit again in the weeks to come.
Speaker 1:Living Catholic is a production of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City for Oklahoma Catholic Radio. To learn more, visit okcrorg.