"People brought to him a paralytic lying on a stretcher. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.’" (Mt. 9:2)

Those who approached Jesus with the paralytic had full confidence in His power and goodness.

They were seeking a cure for the paralytic’s physical ailment, but Jesus gave him a spiritual cure and pardon from his sins (a gift far more sublime and theretofore difficult to attain than a physical cure).

All infirmed men seek a physical cure. Yet a spiritual cure for spiritual ills and pardon for offenses committed is a gift few seek with gusto. We prefer to continue in an internal cancer of the soul rather than seek the only remedy available to our ailing internal life.

Jesus attends to honest needs and petitions that come from a sincere faith — in ways much more profound than we would imagine.

True faith and wisdom — the kind that evokes His mercy — is what sustains us in the world. The men in the Gospel reading did not get the opportunity to ask anything of Jesus — yet He satisfied their desires.

The Lord corrected the witnesses’ haughty and judgmental attitude toward a spiritual healing with a visible gift of a physical cure to wipe away their disbelief.

Psalm 86: "You are great and do wondrous deeds; and you alone are God. Teach me, LORD, your way that I may walk in your truth."

St. Elizabeth, d. 1336; named after her great-aunt, St. Elizabeth of Hungary; queen and mother; lover of the poor; peacemaker in the royal family; later a Franciscan tertiary; patroness of Catholic Charities.