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I find it helpful to think of history as a story and the world as its setting. There’s an introduction, inciting incident, rising action (preparation), climax, falling action (the road back), and resolution. I think looking at the world through this lens gives us a peek into God’s perspective in His omniscience.
The Introduction: God creates the world. Adam and Eve live in perfect relationship with each other and with God. All is well.
Inciting Incident: Satan tempts the couple and they succumb. They reject their perfect relationship with God in hopes of attaining something better for themselves. Their sin of pride corrupts humanity.
Rising Action: The entire Old Testament. The great story of Israel, as our friend Bishop Barron describes it. God makes covenant after covenant with His chosen people as an offering of restored relationship. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David. And still His people continue to turn away from Him. The reign of sin remains.
Climax: The coming of a great Savior that will restore the world to its proper order! He is prophesied about throughout history. God becomes a human being. Jesus Christ is born of a virgin, lives, suffers, dies on the cross, and rises from the dead to defeat the power of sin and death forever.
Falling Action: This is where we’re at now in the way I see the story. Jesus Christ has already won the battle. We are saved! But so much of the world doesn’t know it yet. We must continue to fight the battle against sin within ourselves through Christ’s resurrection power. God has chosen to allow sin to continue to rule the world until His appointed time, but we now have the power to overcome it.
Resolution: At the fullness of time, Jesus Christ will come again in His true power and glory. He will defeat Satan for the last time and will bring with Him the new heaven and the new earth. This is the final battle which is already won.
It’s so helpful to me to think this way because it keeps my eyes on the bigger picture. It’s so easy to lose the forest through the trees! I fight my battle against sin and self every day and the devil does a really good job of discouraging me, telling me to give up, telling me it’s not worth the struggle, feeding me lies about myself and about God. It’s so easy to forget that the battle is already won! The climax has happened, and every turn of the world is taking us closer toward resolution.
And yet, as I described, sin and its effects are still a woeful part of the world. That’s what we see in today’s Gospel. Jesus doesn’t heal the paralytic right away; He first offers him forgiveness for his sins. Because sin is the root of all evil. Sin is the cause of every brokenness and injustice in the world. Sin is the cause of the man’s paralysis. Now understand that it was not his own sin that caused the paralysis. Bad things happen to good people. But sin brought disorder into what was once a perfect world. Bad things aren’t always caused by people. Sometimes bad things just are.
Jesus knows all too well that sin and its effects are the ultimate reasons for every human suffering. He knows why He came into the world, to save it from the effects of sin. That’s why the forgiveness of sins is preeminent over physical healing. If physical healing were vital for salvation, there would be a miraculous Sacrament of physical healing. But no, Jesus chose to institute the miraculous Sacrament of Reconciliation for the spiritual healing of our souls.
Sin is the cause of every human suffering. But we find ourselves on the right side of the climax of the Salvation Story. As we approach the resolution, you have a vital part to play. In the words of Christ Himself, “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” Receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation regularly and be reconciled to God! Then we will bring forth, with Christ, the Kingdom of God.
-Amanda Benner, Director of Evangelization