Hebrews 1:10-2:3; Mark 2:1-12
We will misunderstand these blessed weeks of Lent if we assume that they are about helping us to have clearer ideas or deeper feelings about our Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection. We will be even more confused if we think that our intensified prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and repentance somehow earn God’s forgiveness or make us better than other people. Quite the contrary, Lenten disciples are simply opportunities to open our souls to the gracious healing of our Lord so that we may share more fully in His life. That is another way of saying that the point of Lent is to grow in our knowledge of God through true spiritual experience and encounter.
On
this second Sunday of the Great Fast, we commemorate St. Gregory Palamas, who
defended the experience of monks who, in the stillness of prayer from their
hearts, saw the Uncreated Light of God.
The eyes of their souls were cleansed and illumined such that they beheld the divine glory
as the Apostles did at the Transfiguration of the Lord on Mount Tabor. St. Gregory taught that to know God is to
participate in His gracious divine energies as we are transformed in holiness
in every aspect of our existence. He proclaimed that our calling is to know and
experience God through true spiritual union with Him that sanctifies every
dimension of the human person. To do so
is to encounter the great “I AM” of the Burning Bush from the depths of our
souls in a way that illumines us entirely. (Ex. 3:14) It is to shine
brilliantly in holiness like an iron left in the fire of the divine glory.
In
today’s gospel reading, Christ healed a paralyzed man, enabling him to stand
up, carry his bed, and walk home as a sign of the Savior’s divine authority to
forgive sins. In doing so, He restored not only a body to health but a whole
person who faced all the practical challenges of daily life in the world as we
know it. Though Palamas focused
primarily on the hesychasm of monks, he also taught that “those who live in the
world…must force themselves to use the things of this world in conformity with
the commandments of God.”[1] When we mindfully embrace the struggle to purify
our hearts so that we may live according to love of God and neighbor, which are
the greatest of the commandments, and not according to our self-centered desires,
we come to know and experience Christ from the depths of our souls more fully. We pray,
fast, give, forgive, and confess and repent of our sins during Lent so that we
may open our hearts, and every aspect of our lives, as fully as possible to the
purifying healing of our Lord’s gracious divine energies.
His healing is open to all, regardless of age, sex, marital
status, social standing, or any other characteristic. Christ sent the formerly paralyzed man home
to resume a conventional life. Since the Savior is both fully divine and fully
human, literally every aspect of our human existence may become radiant with the
divine glory, if we will only offer ourselves to Him for healing and hold
nothing back. Doing so requires a great
struggle and constant vigilance against the blindness and weakness that our
passions so easily bring upon us. The
disciplines of Lent help us to embrace the struggle to open the eyes of our
souls to behold the glory of the Lord, to know Him from the depths of our
hearts.
While no particular use of the Jesus Prayer is required of
us, we must all call mindfully for the Lord’s healing mercy each day in order
to receive His liberation from slavery to the paralysis of sin. Prayer is not about pondering ideas,
cultivating emotions, or mouthing words, but about being fully present to God
from the depths of our souls. Doing so
is absolutely necessary to know Christ and become more like Him in
holiness. It is the essential foundation
for accepting Christ’s healing and gaining the strength to make whatever
challenges we face points of entrance into the life of the Kingdom of the
Heaven. In order to know the Lord, we simply must ground our lives in
prayer.
Lent
does not call us merely to think or have feelings about our Lord’s Cross and
resurrection. This season invites us to grow
in our personal knowledge and experience of the Savior Who offered Himself on
the Cross and rose in glory on the third day for our salvation. Its
disciplines strengthen us for the life of holiness possible only for those who share
in Christ’s restoration and fulfillment of the human person in the divine image
and likeness. Whenever we pray, fast,
serve others with humility, and confess and repent of our sins, we open
ourselves to receive the light of the Lord and become more like Him. These are not practices only for those who live
in what we imagine to be ideal circumstances, but are necessary for all who
remain weak before their passions with spiritual vision darkened by sin. No circumstance of our lives excuses us in
any way from answering the calling to become radiant with the divine energies
of our Lord as we rise up from our beds of weakness and move forward in a life
of holiness. That is the calling of the
God-Man to us all.
The Sayings of the Desert Fathers records that God revealed to Saint Antony the Great of Egypt
that “there was one who was his equal in the city. He was a doctor by
profession and whatever he had beyond his needs he gave to the poor, and every
day he sang the Sanctus with the angels.” The example of that righteous man
shows that the only limits to our participation in the life of Christ are those
that we choose to impose on ourselves. As
we continue our Lenten journey, let us make the circumstances of our lives,
whatever they may be, points of entrance into the blessed life of our Lord. Let us know Him as God from the depths of our
hearts as we come to shine brightly
with the divine glory by grace. That is
not a matter of rational speculation, historical remembrance, or cultivation of
emotions about the Savior’s Cross and empty tomb, but of lifting up our hearts and
entering into the joy of the One Who destroyed the power of sin and death by
His glorious resurrection on the third day.
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