The value of priests and confession, proved by the healing of the Paralytic
The miracle of the paralytic points to the mercy of God: the forgiveness of sins through men, for men — a power feared by devils, denied by heretics, and neglected in the modern world.
The miracle of the paralytic points to the mercy of God: the forgiveness of sins through men, for men — a power feared by devils, denied by heretics, and neglected in the modern world.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr Coleridge shows us…
How the healing of the paralytic stands as a sacramental sign of the power to absolve sins.
That the conferral of this power on men reflects God’s mercy and the logic of the Incarnation.
Why the world’s hatred of this doctrine reveals both its truth and God’s love for man.
He shows us that Christ’s power to forgive sins through men is the most merciful humiliation of divine love — and the greatest scandal to pride.
For more context on this chapter, see Part I.
The Healing of the Paralytic
The Training of the Apostles, Part I
Chapter IV
St. Matt. ix. 1–9; St. Mark ii. 1–14; St. Luke v. 17–29
Story of the Gospels, § 139
Burns and Oates, London, 1884
Why Jesus’ timing in healing and forgiving the Paralytic was important
Who was in the crowd of religious leaders when Jesus healed and forgave the Paralytic?
Why Jesus said ‘Thy sins are forgiven’ before healing the Paralytic
The value of priests and confession, proved by the healing of the Paralytic
The miracle sacramental
Thus it may well be said that this miracle takes its place by the side of those most conspicuous actions of our Lord, in which He foreshadowed or declared the greater marvels which were to become permanent in His Church after Him. Such was the miracle at Cana, or again that of the marvellous fishing, or again those of the multiplication of the loaves, in which the institution of the Blessed Sacrament was prefigured.
If our Lord had chosen to subjoin on the present occasion a long discourse, in which He might have explained fully the whole doctrine of absolution and of the power of the keys as applied to sins, this miracle would have seemed to Christians in all ages quite as appropriate an introduction to that doctrinal exposition, as the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand to the great discourse on the Blessed Sacrament which St. John has added to his narrative of that miracle of the multiplication of the loaves.
The poor people who rejoiced so heartily at this first announcement of the power which men were to receive as to the forgiveness of sins, could only anticipate in part and dimly what the exercise of that power was to be. Their marvel at the goodness of God could only touch it in general, and without experience of its practical application. It was to be left to Christians of all times and generations to thank God with a more full intelligence for His mercy in giving this power to men.
Next to the marvellous power of offering the Divine Sacrifice, and so making present on the altar the very Body and Blood of our Lord, no greater boon has ever been conferred on earth, even as the fruit of the Passion and Death of the Incarnate Son. If our Lord had left nothing behind Him in the Church but the Sacrament of Penance, He would have left a gift worthy of the praises of all Heaven throughout all eternity. If it were allowed to Christians once in their lives, after a long and painful preparation, to approach this single sacrament, it might well seem as if God had exhausted the utmost largeness of indulgence and compassion for those who were in need of it. It might have seemed as if salvation had been made so secure and so easy of access, that no one could fail, without the most outrageous madness, to reap its full benefit.
And this is one of the boons of God’s love as to which there has been the greatest amount of negligence on the part of those who have known of it, and which have provoked the greatest amount of obloquy and calumny against the Church for proclaiming and using the power which God has bestowed upon her.
Hostility to the doctrine of forgiveness
It is common, even still, to hear Christians repeat the objection of the Scribes—‘Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ The confessional has been made the great point of attack against which heretics, especially of modern times, have directed their assaults, and, amid the whole range of the ordinances of our Lord, there is not one against which the father of lies, and the men who have sold themselves to be his instruments, have poured forth torrents of falsehood more persistent and more abominable.
It is true that the unregenerate mind revolts against almost every instance of the goodness of God in conferring, to any extent and in any way, supernatural power on men like ourselves.
But there is something peculiarly furious about the hostility which has been so constantly aroused by the doctrine that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins, and that this power is perpetuated in the Church. No plain declarations of Scripture have been so violently dealt with as those texts of the New Testament which witness to this doctrine, no point to which the teaching of tradition bears so unmistakable a witness has yet been so determinedly denied. It is a more wonderful thing, certainly, that men should have the power of consecrating the Blessed Sacrament, and of making our Lord’s Body and Blood present on the altar by the words of his mouth. But men who can believe this, because our Lord has virtually said so, cannot believe in the power of absolution, of which our Lord had spoken even more directly.
It may perhaps be, that the power of the forgiveness of sins, as it is spoken of by our Lord in this and other places, implies, in a manner which men instinctively recognise, the correlative duty of confession in those whose sins are to be forgiven.
Whatever may be the cause of the rabid hatred with which this doctrine has been received, it is certain that it shows the extreme tenderness and consideration of God for our poor and weak nature, in a degree which is nowhere surpassed in the whole economy of redemption. It seems as if the sacred writer had almost intended to draw our thoughts to this immense condescension and considerateness in the words in which he has recorded the wonder of the crowd: they are said not merely to have glorified God for allowing sins to be forgiven on earth, but for having given the power to do this unto men.
It is true that the whole arrangement of the kingdom of the Incarnation involves the commission of the chief spiritual powers which were to be permanent therein, to men rather than angels. For our Lord took on Him the seed of Abraham, not the created nature of the angels. But the mercifulness of this dispensation is nowhere so conspicuous as in the selection of men as the ministers, especially of reconciliation and pardon.
Passage from Cardinal Newman
The greatest English writer of our time has drawn out this thought in a discourse of which it will be enough to quote only a part.
‘It is almost the definition of a priest that he has sins of his own to atone for. “Every high priest,” says the Apostle…
“… taken from among men, is appointed for men, in the things that appertain unto God, that he may offer gifts and sacrifices for sins; who can condole with those who are in ignorance and error, because he also himself is compassed with infirmity. And therefore he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins.”’1
‘Most strange is this in itself, my brethren,’ continues Cardinal Newman…
‘… but not strange, when you consider it is the appointment of an all-merciful God; not strange in Him, because the Apostle gives the reason of it in the passage I have quoted. The priests of the New Law are men, that they may “condole with those who are in ignorance and error, because they too are compassed with infirmity.”
‘Had angels been your priests, my brethren, they could not have condoled with you, sympathised with you, have had compassion on you, tenderly felt for you, and made allowances for you, as we can; they could not have been your patterns and guides, and have led you on from your old selves into a new life, as they can who come from the midst of you, who have been led on themselves as you are to be led, who know well your difficulties, who have had experience, at least, of your temptations, who know the strength of the flesh and the wiles of the devil, even though they have baffled them; who are already disposed to take your part, and be indulgent towards you, and can advise you most practically, and warn you most seasonably and prudently.
‘Therefore did He send you men to be the ministers of reconciliation and intercession; as He Himself, though He could not sin, yet, by becoming Man, took on Him, as far as was possible to God, man’s burthen of infirmity and trial in His own Person. He could not be a sinner, but He could be a man, and He took to Himself a man’s heart, that we might intrust our hearts to Him, and “was tempted in all things, like as we are, yet without sin.”’2
Men made judges
In His discourse with the Jewish authorities at Jerusalem, after the miracle on the impotent man at the pool of Bethsaida, of which we shall have to speak in the present volume, our Lord tells us that the Father has committed the office of the judge of mankind to Himself in His human nature, because He is the Son of Man.
It is a further carrying out of the same principle, that the priests of the New Covenant, who have to exercise the functions of judges with regard to the sins which are to be submitted to the sacred tribunal of penance in order to absolution, by virtue of this power of the Son of Man on earth to forgive sins, should also be men like the sinners whom they are to judge and to absolve after judgment.
The reason given by St. Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews contains many points which might be unfolded in pious meditation, and to this reason that other may be added, of which the same Apostle speaks in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians,3 where he says of the Gospel ministry, that ‘we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency may be of the power of God, and not of us.’ For if the power of forgiving sins is so peculiarly the prerogative of God, it is greatly to His glory to commit it to a sinful and weak race, rather than to the Princes of His own heavenly Court, who have never known sin in themselves.
The pardon of sin is a triumph over the enemies of God and man by which they are especially confounded, and by which their malice is in a certain true sense turned against themselves, for if they had not led man into sin, he could never have reaped the benefits of redemption.
And thus the administration of this great fruit of our Lord’s victory is more complete a defeat for them when it is committed to men, than if it had been intrusted to the blessed spirits like themselves in nature, who stood firm when they fell away from God.
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The Healing of the Paralytic
Why Jesus’ timing in healing and forgiving the Paralytic was important
Who was in the crowd of religious leaders when Jesus healed and forgave the Paralytic?
Why Jesus said ‘Thy sins are forgiven’ before healing the Paralytic
The value of priests and confession, proved by the healing of the Paralytic
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Heb. v. 1–3.
Discourses to Mixed Congregations, No. 3.
2 Cor. iv. 7.