If you have not suffered any bodily injury, you may be unaware of the plight of paralytics and what daily living means for them. On no other day than Good Friday of the year 2011, I broke my ankle. I was on a ladder trying to unveil the crucifix hanging about twenty feet above the apse of the altar when the rung of the ladder on which I was standing broke off. Miraculously, the ladder fell off leaving my feet and my whole body on their own as I landed on the hard floor. I heard clearly the sound of cracking bones. But I was in denial as I got up to walk. I managed a few steps before crumbling into the hands of a beloved parishioner, who had forewarned me not to try walking. As you may have noticed, quite a few priests are boneheaded. All the hospital stuff: cast and wheelchair and crutches were not as humiliating to me as when I realized I wouldn’t be able to perform basic human/private functions without assistance. The rest is story. But I count myself as one—like the crippled man at the Beautiful Gate—healed through the power of Jesus’ Resurrection.
You didn’t hear the story that was the prologue to Peter’s sermon in the first reading. A paralytic with congenital disability had been healed at the Beautiful Gate of the temple. I’m not going to get into the dispute by scholars about the gate—Nicanor or Shushan or any other—to which the reference is made. I rather choose the spiritual interpretation that posits the gate as the “horaios” or fair and lovely gate because of the miracle wrought there. Isaiah asks that the gate be opened “...for the upright nation, the nation that keeps faith to enter” (Isaiah 26:2). He may have prophesied about this gate and miracle as the foundation for the new people—the upright nation—comprising the poor, the broken, the crippled, the abandoned, the marginalized, who will, rejoicing, enter the Lord’s house. The former paralytic will lead the dance into God’s House even as the disgruntled authorities still sought to silence and arrest and threaten the apostles. Peter’s sermon today highlights the insidious nature of the plot against the Righteous One by whose power the paralytic had been healed. He made sure to rebuke them for their treachery: Pilate had seen through their envy and as a skilled Roman diplomat brought out the worst murderer in town, by name Barabbas, who was on death row. He must have been shocked that the Jews asked for the release of a murderer rather than an innocent person. Doesn’t it shock, too, that society—then as today—elevates on the pedestal porn stars, cheats, liars, frauds? Barabbas is well and alive in our midst. But Peter courageously rebukes them and us for our ignorance as he announces a repentance that would lead to conversion and restoration.
Such was the message that Jesus brought last Sunday as He inaugurated the new ritual of reconciliation. Today, no sooner had the disciples who met Him on the road to Emmaus started to recount the story of their encounter than He walks in with the same greeting of peace. He shows them the riven hands and feet. Why does He retain those scars? Because they are the precious price of our redemption. Our plastic age would seek to erase the scars and present a polished Jesus who promises only wealth and health. But as Fulton Sheen said, “When Satan enthrones himself as lord, he’ll speak gracious words of comfort, extend his hands to lovingly carry and caress children. But how do we tell he’s not the Lord? He’ll have no scars; he’ll appear as a priest but not a victim.”
The lesson today: We may be broken—whether from falling from a ladder or getting entangled with sin—but the Lord offers us healing through the power of His Resurrection. Everything, He said, happened to fulfil the scriptures “that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead...and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in His name to all the nations” (Luke 24:46-47). Our own scars, borne in His name, prove us witnesses.
Fr. Chukwudi Jo Okonkwo