The cure of a paralytic at Capernaum (Mk 2,1-12) was one of the first miracles worked by Jesus, and the first public manifestation of his desire to forgive sinners. Jesus took to himself a power that belongs only to God. Anyone could cure if God gave him the power to do so, but forgiving sins belonged only to God. Jesus does not deny the premise of his opponents. He performs the lesser miracle of healing to make it very clear that he was capable of something greater, namely, the forgiveness of sins. He promises what he intends to do. There is something of God acting in him. He is able to restore complete salvation to the man. He heals radically the evil that troubles the paralyzed man.
Jesus, then, shows very early on that he is divine. He forgave a sick man who came looking for a miracle, and he healed a sinner in order to prove that he had forgiven him his sins. The paralyzed man wanted nothing more than a remedy for his physical paralysis. Jesus granted what he asked for and more besides. If we are a bit puzzled by the attitude of Jesus, it is because we cannot get him to repeat for us what he did at Capernaum. We need to ask ourselves what is wrong with our way of being Christian. Why is it that our sharing in the life of Jesus does not free us from the evil that dwells in us? Why is that, in all the time we have been with him, he has not brought salvation to us in soul and body?
Read more http://say.sdb.org/blogs/JJB/2012/02/12/lectio-divina-year-b-7th-sunday-in-ordin-12
