SPEAKER_00: Have you ever noticed that we usually ask God to fix the wrong thing?
SPEAKER_00: When we pray, we ask him to remove the illness, to solve the financial problem, to repair the relationship, to open the right door.
SPEAKER_00: None of those prayers are wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Himself healed countless people.
SPEAKER_00: But today's gospel teaches us something surprising.
SPEAKER_00: God is always more concerned with the condition of our soul than the condition of our body.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, the body matters.
SPEAKER_00: Our struggles matter.
SPEAKER_00: The cross is real.
SPEAKER_00: Our suffering matters.
SPEAKER_00: But the soul lasts forever.
SPEAKER_00: And that is where Jesus always begins.
SPEAKER_00: The first reading introduces us again to the prophet Amos.
SPEAKER_00: Amos was not a professional prophet.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he tells us exactly who he was.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I was a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, I wasn't looking for this job.
SPEAKER_00: He did not graduate from a school of prophets.
SPEAKER_00: He did not seek public recognition.
SPEAKER_00: He did not have political influence.
SPEAKER_00: He was simply living an ordinary life when God interrupted it.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord took me from following the flock, he says.
SPEAKER_00: What a beautiful sentence.
SPEAKER_00: Amos did not choose the mission.
SPEAKER_00: The mission chose him.
SPEAKER_00: That's how God works.
SPEAKER_00: Think about Moses tending sheep, David watching his father's flock, Peter mending fishing nets, Matthew sitting at tax booth.
SPEAKER_00: God delights in calling ordinary people to extraordinary missions.
SPEAKER_00: But notice what happens when Amos obeys.
SPEAKER_00: The priest, Amaziah, tells him, Go home, earn your bread somewhere else.
SPEAKER_00: Do not preach here.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Well, because the truth Amos was preaching had become inconvenient.
SPEAKER_00: It threatened the powerful, it disturbed people's comfort, it challenged the status quo.
SPEAKER_00: The lesson is timeless.
SPEAKER_00: People usually welcome God's word as long as it confirms what they already believe, what they're comfortable with.
SPEAKER_00: The difficulty begins when God's word asks us to change.
SPEAKER_00: Then we often look for reasons to silence the messenger.
SPEAKER_00: Notice the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Some friends bring a paralyzed man to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine the excitement.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone expects one thing, a miracle, a healing.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, Jesus is something no one anticipated.
SPEAKER_00: Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: If I had been one of those friends, I might have whispered, Lord, that's wonderful and all, but that's not exactly why we came here, why we carried him all the way.
SPEAKER_00: Yet Jesus knows exactly what he's doing.
SPEAKER_00: He addresses the deeper paralysis first.
SPEAKER_00: The paralysis of sin.
SPEAKER_00: The physical healing can wait.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because spiritual healing is infinitely more important.
SPEAKER_00: And this reveals something beautiful about our Catholic faith.
SPEAKER_00: Why did Christ establish the sacrament of reconciliation?
SPEAKER_00: Well, because he knows that every one of us carries burdens no physician can remove.
SPEAKER_00: There are wounds that surgery cannot heal.
SPEAKER_00: There are regrets that no amount of success can erase.
SPEAKER_00: And there's guilt that money cannot buy away.
SPEAKER_00: There's shame that no vacation can make disappear.
SPEAKER_00: Only Christ can say, your sins are forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: And notice something else, the scribes immediately accused Jesus of blasphemy.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Well, because they understood something many people today have forgotten.
SPEAKER_00: Only God can forgive sins.
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
SPEAKER_00: That is Jesus' point.
SPEAKER_00: He is revealing his divine identity.
SPEAKER_00: Then to prove that he truly possesses divine authority, he performs the visible miracle.
SPEAKER_00: He tells the paralytic, Rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.
SPEAKER_00: The physical miracle confirms the invisible one, the first one.
SPEAKER_00: The healing of the body proves the healing of the soul.
SPEAKER_00: The crowds leave amazed because they have witnessed far more than a miracle.
SPEAKER_00: They have encountered God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps today we should ask ourselves a different question.
SPEAKER_00: When I come to Jesus, what am I asking him to fix?
SPEAKER_00: Am I asking only for healthier finances, for a better way of life, a stronger body and easier way?
SPEAKER_00: Or am I truly asking him to heal my heart, to free me from pride, to free me from resentment, from selfishness, from the sins that are quietly paralyzing my soul.
SPEAKER_00: Because the greatest miracle Jesus performs is not making the lame walk, it is making sinners into saints.
SPEAKER_00: And he's still doing that miracle today.
SPEAKER_00: Every time someone kneels in the confessional with a sincere heart, every time Christ speaks through his priest the words of absolution, every time a soul rises from sin to grace and changes his life, that's the miracle Jesus came into the world to accomplish.
SPEAKER_00: So today, let us bring him not only our problems, but our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Because when Christ heals the soul, everything else begins to find its proper place.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.