WHEN ONE WAY IS BLOCKED, DON'T GIVE UP! BE CREATIVE!

 

Some men brought on a stretcher a man who was paralyzed. Not finding a way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on the stretcher through the tiles into the middle in front of Jesus. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the one who was paralyzed, "I say to you, rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home."

Luke 5:17-26

The guys in today’s gospel have always inspired me during my 56 years of ministry. Their buddy needed healing. He was paralyzed. When the door of the house where Jesus was staying was blocked by a crowd of people, they could have given up and carried him back home. Instead, they carried him up on the roof, tore a hole big enough to lower their buddy down, right in front of Jesus! Jesus commended those guys for their determination and healed the crippled man right then and there.    

My friends! Declaring a situation as "impossible" is very convenient. It lets us off the hook and relieves us of the hard work of looking for "alternatives."  Nobody expects us to do the "impossible," do they?  Nobody will blame us for doing nothing if we can convince them that "nothing can be done," would they? Like the guys in today’s gospel, we need to use our imaginations, look for alternatives and be resourceful. Friends, I learned a long time ago that the biggest shortage in the Catholic Church is not money or priests. It's imagination!

I learned this truth about imagination back in the seminary. There is so much I can't remember, but there is one thing that remains vivid in my mind. It was toward the very end.  I forgot who it was, but one of our teachers asked us to present some "pastoral situations" for class discussion - maybe a wedding, funeral or counseling situation. He asked us to write up the "ideal" way we might handle the situation once we were ordained.

After we had all written up our "ideal" approaches to the situations we described, he collected the papers and stood there in the front of class and ripped them up into small pieces and threw them in the garbage.  After that he said to us, "You will hardly ever get to do the "ideal," so let's talk about some alternative approaches."  Man, has that insight ever come in handy over the last 56 years!

Here is an old story that I have told many times about the power of imagination. It's about watching TV one day and seeing a young man who had been in a motorcycle wreck and had one of his legs amputated, being interviewed. He had been a great athlete and was eaten up with bitterness about the loss of his leg. It was depressing so I turned the channel. On the other channel was a young man, about the same age, coming dawn the mountains on skis. It wasn't till he got to the end of his run that I noticed that he was a one-legged skier in the Handicapped Olympics!

One young man gave up and the other one got up! The second young man, with one leg, got up and looked for alternatives. This young man found an "alternative" rather than simply "giving up." 

We have all heard the saying, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree!" Since I have a reputation for my imagination and determination, that old saying came to mind in a serious way recently when I discovered that my own father was the Valedictorian at his high school graduation on May 14, 1935. I learned that he gave a speech based on an old Latin saying attributed to Hannibal, when his generals told him that it was impossible to cross the Alps by elephant. "I shall either find a way or make one." My father's address was entitled "Find a Way or Make It."  

What does today's gospel tell us? Never give up! Never quit! Find another way! Find an alternative!