Saturday of Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time

 Year A

Memorial of Saint Dominic 

HAB 1:12—2:4

PS 9:8-9, 10-11, 12-13 R. (11b)

MT 17:14-20

Pride and the Sufferers in the Multitude

Just as forgiveness is given by the one who has power and authority to the one who has not, healing is also given by the surgeon who has the power and authority to bring healing to the one who is sick.

It was when Jesus gave his disciples the gifts of the Holy Spirit that he gave them the authority to forgive sins, and by extension bring healing to souls.

John 20:22-23 After saying this he breathed on them and said: Receive the Holy. If you forgive anyone's sins, they are forgiven; if you retain anyone's sins, they are retained.

In today's gospel, the stress is on the young man who was possessed by the spirit of dumbness, and was always falling into fire and into water. The parallel text of today's gospel in Mark 9:22, gives the reason why the young man falls into fire and water; it is for him to be destroyed.

While in Mark the sickness is dumbness, in Matthew, it is madness (he is demented and in a wretched state). This gives us an idea of the source of the problem.  

Jesus Christ on the Mountain of Transfiguration has been revealed to us, as the Light of the World. After that he talked about his sufferings and the sufferings that John, who came not with the soul but with the power and authority of Elijah, faced. Now in the crowd among those suffering is this young man, and by extension his father, who like all good fathers, seeks good for his son. 

Why all this suffering? Why are failing  to see the Light of the world revealed to us? Why are we failing to follow yesterday's instructions to deny ourselves, take up our Crosses and follow Jesus Christ?  The answer is Pride.The creatures with the characteristic of madness or dumbness are "animals"; irrational or with no intellectual faculty. But this is exactly what pride makes us become.

Proverb 16:18 

Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.

Through Pride, the evil one fell, through the Pride of our first parents, destruction came to humans. We all have a sort  of dumbness or madness in us. We can behave irrationally sometimes, and it is mostly because our Pride blinds us.

Since the first step of Pride is to turn our heart away from our Maker, which is sin,  that which the creator created for our good becomes our destruction.  The fire which purges and refines becomes that which destroys, water which washes and cleanses becomes that which destroys. 

When we turn away from the Creator what he created for us turns against us. The huge loss is when the Wisdom he gave us turns against us and we become as dumb or irrational as animals. Since the beginning of Wisdom is the fear of the Lord, and the fear of the Lord stems from Faith, it is Faith in God that can lead to healing. 

When Pride blinded humanity, God humbled himself and took our nature to crucify humanity's Pride on the Cross. He wants to let everything He created good for us turn for our good again; have Faith in him. The truth is that a long illness makes a fool of a doctor but with Faith in the one to whom all things are possible, our dumbness or madness can be cured.

By 

Sylvester Amakye-Quayson 

Edited by 

Michael Owusu Amponsah