I guess that we all have all seen some pretty unbelievable things in our lives. And those memories of those extraordinary events stick with us. And they stick out among all the other memories that we have. Hopefully, one of the happiest memories that a lot of us will have for the rest of our lives is our experience of God, taking a former soybean field, and using all of us, He built a church, a parish, to last for a long time. I will never forget the night that we dedicated our new church and how happy we all were. That was pretty amazing. Certainly one of the saddest memories that will probably be with all of us for the rest of our lives is the image of that second jetliner hitting the World Trade Center. It was that moment in time when all of us realized that 9/11 wasn’t an accident, but it was other people intentionally trying to kill as many of us as they could. It was shocking. And we cried. And then, we all have those crazy memories. Once, several years ago, I pulled into a parking lot at a shopping center and I parked my truck between these two cars. And before I could get out of my truck, the car on my left, on the driver’s side, disappeared down into the ground. I kid you not. One minute I was looking at it and it was there, and the next minute the car was down IN the ground, below the surface of the parking lot. At first I thought it was a crazy magic trick. I was like, “Where’s David Copperfield?” And then I thought it was one of those Candid Camera deals. I even looked around for the hidden camera. Finally, coming to my senses, I realized that I had parked right next to a sink hole that had just swallowed the car next to me, and that my heavy truck was sitting right on the edge of the hole. I backed out of the parking space very slowly. It was crazy. What are the chances of that happening to you?

That’s probably exactly what everybody said that day in that house from our Gospel story. It’s not every day that you go to hear somebody talk, and then these guys open up the roof over your head and lower their friend down on a mat. This is a crazy memory. Everybody must have been shocked. Who does this? The whole town must have talked about what happened in that house that day for the rest of their lives. And the Gospel doesn’t tell us about how the homeowner felt about having a huge hole made in his roof. I’m sure he was real happy. But the real person that was changed that day wasn’t the homeowner, or the four friends, or the crowd, or even the Scribes. The person that was most changed that day was this paralyzed man. His friends knew that Jesus could help him. They went to great measures to get him to Jesus. The Scribes were so busy worrying about what Jesus had said that they didn’t care about this paralyzed man. But Jesus heals him. He gives him back his life. Jesus changes everything for the man. From that day on, it was a whole new life. The former paralytic would not be the same in many ways. God has changed him.

And that’s the point that our readings this weekend. Jesus is offering us a completely new way of life. In our first reading from Isaiah, God is telling us the past is the past. Jesus was a whole lot more concerned with the right now and the future than what He was the past. Now is our chance. What we do today, what we do tomorrow, that’s what matters most to God. Everybody has their pasts. We all do. All we can do about our past is be sorry and ask for forgiveness. But we can do a lot more about right now. Now, we can follow Jesus’ way. Now we can be loving and caring. Now we can praise and worship a God that we know loves us. Now we can be peacemakers and signs of hope for a world that so desperately needs it. This is our time. Like the paralytic, we too have been healed by Jesus. We can’t be the same. And isn’t one of the greatest challenges facing the Church today the fact that we want to stay the same? We want to be Catholic Christians and still be sinners. That’s the old way of life. That’s what we did before we knew Jesus and His love. The paralyzed man didn’t go back to laying around on his mat AFTER he had been healed. He lived anew. He was changed. And so are we. Our conversions MUST continue. We cannot stay the same. God isn’t finished with any of us yet. And that’s what the Scribes and the Pharisees didn’t get. They couldn’t understand. They thought they had God all wrapped up and in their pocket. And they missed out on God when He was right in front of them.

This is an awesome story. We can only imagine what it must have been like to have seen that roof open up, and to see that paralyzed man lowered down and healed by Jesus. It would have made a crazy memory that we would never forget. But what we most don’t want to forget, is that the same Jesus wants to bring us to a new life also. Let us live that life that is always new. God is molding all of us into His new creations. Let us let Him!

God bless us on this Seventh Sunday of Ordinary time, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit… AMEN !!!

St. Maria Goretti… Pray for us !!!