Lectio Divina – Thursday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Theme: “sins”
Written in the first person, in the voice of G.K. Chesterton
1. Lectio
Gospel – Matthew 9:1–8
> “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.’… ‘Which is easier, to say, “Your sins are forgiven,” or to say, “Rise and walk”? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—he then said to the paralytic, ‘Rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.'”
The astonishing thing is not that Jesus heals a paralyzed man, but that He first addresses the deeper paralysis. Before muscles are strengthened, the soul is restored. The scribes are scandalized because they can imagine a miracle of the body more easily than a miracle of mercy. Yet Jesus insists that forgiveness is not an invisible afterthought but the very beginning of new life. The man walks because first he is reconciled.
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2. Meditatio
For the past week I have been brooding baby turkeys—poults—and I am fascinated by how unlike chicks they are. When I opened the brooder door for the chicks, they exploded into motion, fluttering in every direction as though the world had suddenly caught fire. When I opened the door for the poults, I received only blank stares. They seemed almost oblivious to the open door before them. There was neither fight nor flight.
The longer I watched them, the more I recognized myself.
When confronted with the sins of creation committed by others, I become like a startled chicken. I flap, protest, criticize, and often rage. Yet when confronted with my own sins against creation, I become like a poult. I stare blankly, scarcely aware that the door has been opened.
Take something as ordinary as mowing the lawn. For years I congratulated myself for maintaining a tidy landscape. A neatly manicured lawn appeared to be an act of stewardship. Yet I have been increasingly challenged to recognize that this very practice often contributes to air pollution, habitat destruction, unnecessary water consumption, chemical runoff, and the reduction of biodiversity.
Pope Francis’s words in Laudato Si’ strike me like Nathan’s words to David:
> “For human beings… to destroy the biological diversity of God’s creation… to contaminate the earth’s waters, its land, its air, and its life—these are sins.”
The temptation is to react like the scribes in today’s Gospel. When Jesus says, “Your sins are forgiven,” I find myself objecting, “What sins?” I am willing to confess impatience, pride, or gluttony. But sins against creation? Surely not mowing grass!
Yet perhaps the Lord is doing precisely what He did with the paralytic. Before He asks me to rise, He asks me to admit what has held me down.
That realization has begun quietly reshaping life at The Glenn. Instead of seeing grass as something to be conquered with a mower, I am beginning to see it as food waiting to be harvested. Sheep convert it into nourishment. Kunekune pigs graze rather than devastate. Livestock guardian dogs protect the system. What once appeared to be waste becomes abundance.
Perhaps my repentance is not merely to stop doing something harmful, but to begin doing something healing.
Saint John Paul II, in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, reminds me that solidarity is more than sympathy; it is a shared responsibility for one another and for the common good. Environmental degradation is not merely a technical failure but a failure of love. The widening gap between rich and poor peoples is sustained by structures that often ignore both the dignity of workers and the integrity of creation.
Regenerative agriculture, then, is not merely an agricultural experiment. It is becoming, for me, a sacramental act of repentance—a way of saying with my hands what I profess with my lips: that creation belongs first to God.
The greatest miracle in today’s Gospel is not that a man walked home carrying his mat. It is that he walked home carrying forgiven sins instead of hidden ones.
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3. Oratio (Prayer)
Lord Jesus,
When You look upon me, do not merely heal what is visible.
Forgive what lies beneath.
Forgive the sins I recognize, and even more the sins to which I have become blind.
Deliver me from the pride that sees every splinter in another’s field while ignoring the clear-cut forest within my own heart.
Teach me to repent not only with sorrow but with imagination, discovering new ways to cultivate rather than consume, to harvest rather than destroy, to heal rather than merely manage.
When You say, “Your sins are forgiven,” grant me the courage not to argue, but to rise.
Amen.
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4. Contemplatio (Chestertonian Synthesis)
Chesterton delighted in pointing out that miracles are not violations of nature but restorations of it. A lame man walking is not nature being broken; it is nature being made whole. So too with forgiveness. Sin is the unnatural thing. Grace is what restores the original design.
How curious that I can spend years trying to repair damaged soil while resisting God’s attempt to repair my own soul. I am eager to regenerate pastures but reluctant to regenerate habits. I celebrate biodiversity while overlooking the poverty of my own repentance.
The paralytic’s greatest burden was never the stretcher beneath him. It was the burden he could not see. Christ removed that burden first.
Perhaps every regenerative act at The Glenn—every patch of harvested grass, every grazing pig, every protected lamb—is meant to remind me that God has always been in the business of regeneration.
The Kingdom of Heaven does not begin when the grass grows greener.
It begins when a forgiven sinner hears Christ say, “Rise,” and discovers that mercy has already accomplished what effort alone never could.
Thursday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
