Mark 2:11 — Community Reflections

MARK 2:11 — KING JAMES VERSION 0

“I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house.”

I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home — the command is simple, direct, and tripartite: get up (stand), take your mat (demonstrate that the paralysis is gone), go home (re-enter normal life). The taking of the mat is particularly significant: the mat was the emblem of the man's condition (he was carried on it); now he carries it, reversing the relationship between the man and the mat entirely. The command to go home returns him to the life from which the paralysis had excluded him. The healing is not a dramatic display performed for the crowd but a restoration of a person to their ordinary life — the kingdom's work is not spectacle but rehabilitation.

Church Fathers on Mark 2:11

Because the compassion of God deserts not even carnal persons, He accords to them the grace of His presence, by which even they may be made spiritual. After the desert, the Lord returns into the city.
Bede · 8th century · in Marc., 1, 10

But Matthew writes this miracle as if it were done in the city of the Lord, whilst Mark places it in Capernaum, which would be more difficult of solution, if Matthew had also named Nazareth. But seeing that Galilee itself might be called the city of the Lord, who can doubt but that the Lord did these things in His own city, since He did them in Capernaum, a city of Galilee; particularly as Capernaum was of such importance in Galilee as to be called its metropolis?
Augustine · 4th century · de Con. Evan., ii, 25

He saw the faith of the sick man himself, since he would not have allowed himself to be carried, unless he’d had faith to be healed.
Theophylact · 11th century

Read all 17 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain

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