Today's Daily Lesson comes from Mark chapter 2 verses 1 through 5:
When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. 2So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. 3Then some people came, bringing to him a paralysed man, carried by four of them. 4And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. 5When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’
A while back I listened to an interview with geophysicist and Catholic spiritual thinker Xavier Le Pichon, in which he reflected on some of the anthropological discoveries he has made in digging up thousands of year old human burial sites and what they tell us about human compassion and care.
One of Le Pichon's discoveries was of a mutilated man who lived several centuries before the Common Era, and whose bones had been crushed in some kind terribly traumatic event. What was most interesting, however, was that the man was over 40 years of age though his bones had actually been injured at a much earlier time. Le Pichon says this indicated that he had lived a long time following his injury and was therefore dependent upon the care of his community for many years, if not decades. For Le Pichon, who spent time in the L'Arch Community, a home for the severely disabled founded by Jean Vanier, this man's bones were proof of a kind of human organizing around suffering, and a refutation of the Darwinian conception of early human life primarily being about solely the survival of the fittest. These people, in a society with only a modicum of technological advancement kept their friend and loved one alive for years by literally carrying him on their back and in their arms.
Le Pichon reflected ". . . the basic thing is not why man is helping the others, but I think it’s why man has this ability to empathize, to identify himself with the suffering person, which leads him, of course, after that to decide to help him, to share the life with him. This is what’s so unique about man."
I have friends who have ordered their lives around the suffering and survival of others. I have friends whose young children bathe their paralyzed father. I have friends who share rounds each day sitting with a friends struggling to hold on amidst the darkness of depression. I have friends who spend countless hours helping their son fight for just inches of movement in his head, because they know life is a matter of only inches for him. I have a friend who gives over four hours every Sunday morning to dress his grandma and see that she gets to her church. What incredible compassion, re-ordering, and self-surrender. What incredible love.
"And seeing their faith," Jesus said, your sins are forgiven."
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