Main news for 10 January 2026

Four people bring a paralytic to Jesus. This was not easy; they had to dig through the roof of the house and lower the sick man's bed on ropes to Jesus' feet. It is clear that this person is dear to them; such labors are not undertaken for those to whom we are indifferent. It is clear that they want Christ to heal him, and their love for this person and their inability to cure him by their own strength give birth in them to hope in Jesus and trust in Him. And Christ sees their faith.

Here also sit "some of the scribes," who do not trust Him, because everything He does or says calls into question their relationship with God, in which they consider themselves experts. We perhaps cannot even realize what a "bombshell" the words Jesus spoke were. The evangelist Mark tells us of the scribes' perplexity and irritation: they cannot accept the truth of these words, and then this is blasphemy, the arrogation to oneself of divine prerogatives. But the friends of the paralytic also must have been perplexed: after all, this was not why they brought him! What Jesus does after this answers both perplexities: faith is not proved vain, and distrust of the truth is put to shame.

In His ministry Jesus is always unexpected, shockingly unexpected. This unexpectedness overturns people's habitual ideas and makes them able to receive something new and thereby change. Have we lost this sense of His unexpectedness, have we grown used to Him, have we made Jesus understandable and one-dimensional for ourselves, bringing nothing new? If so, then we have closed ourselves off from a real meeting with Him.