Hebrews 1:10-2:3; Mark 2:1-12
We
will misunderstand these blessed weeks of Lent if we assume that they are intended
to help us 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
disciplines are simply opportunities to open ourselves in humility as embodied
persons to the gracious healing of the 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 personal knowledge of God through true
spiritual experience, encounter, and transformation.
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 know and experience Christ from the depths of our souls. 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, to the purifying healing of our Lord’s gracious divine
energies. That is how we may truly participate in the joy of His resurrection
even as we live in a world still enslaved to the fear of death.
The Savior’s healing is open to all in
every time, place, and circumstance of the world as we know it. Christ sent the formerly paralyzed man home
to resume a conventional life in a land occupied by a foreign military power
and ruled by tyrants in which the weak were routinely crushed by the mighty. That
is the setting in which the God-Man lived, died, and rose from the dead in
order to make us participants in His divine glory. In order to share in His life in a world that
remains full of hatred, bloodshed, and corruption, we must intentionally offer
ourselves for healing as we mindfully refuse to worship at the perennial pagan
altars of pride, power, and pleasure in all their malign forms. Doing so requires constant vigilance and
struggle against falling back into the spiritual blindness and weakness that
our passions so easily bring upon us. A
few minutes of daily prayer, modest restraints on the desires of our stomachs,
and small gestures of generosity, when done in humility on a regular basis, open
us to receive the grace to participate more fully in His restoration and
fulfillment of the human person in the divine image and likeness.
Since even such small steps will quickly reveal
our abiding weaknesses, they teach us to call mindfully for the Lord’s healing
mercy each day in order to grow in our liberation from slavery to the paralysis
of sin. Prayer is not about pondering
ideas, cultivating emotions, or merely mouthing words, but requires being fully
present to God from the depths of our souls. We must intentionally devote time and energy
to doing so, if we want to gain His healing and strength to rise up from our beds
of spiritual paralysis and move forward on the journey to the heavenly kingdom.
This is not a calling only for
those who are great examples of holiness.
Remember that Christ came to call not the righteous but sinners to
repentance. He was a physician to the
sick and blessed the poor and needy. He
cast demons out of the possessed, raised the dead, and showed mercy to those
considered notorious sinners and hated enemies and foreigners. It was not those
who were perfectly at ease according to the standards of the fallen world who
received Him with joy, but those with broken hearts who knew their own weakness
and misery. No difficult circumstance or
challenge of our lives excuses us from answering the calling to unite ourselves
to Christ from the depths of our hearts each moment. Indeed, it is precisely such struggles which
should inspire us all the more to call out in humility for His mercy.
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.” This example of someone living and working in
the world reminds us that the only limits to our participation in the life of
Christ are those that we 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. We will do so not through rational
speculation, historical remembrance, or cultivation of emotions about the
Savior’s Cross and empty tomb, but by embracing the daily struggle to lift up
our hearts in prayer and to live faithfully so that we may enter into the joy
of the One Who has destroyed the power of sin and death by His glorious
resurrection on the third day. It is
only by truly participating in His life that we may gain the strength to take
up our beds and walk to our true home.
