Romans
12:6-14; Matthew 9: 1-8
One of the most distinctive characteristics of the Orthodox
Christian Faith is a therapeutic view of salvation. Christ is the Great Physician Who restored
people to physical and spiritual health in His earthly ministry. He set people free from demons, enabled the
blind to see and the lame to walk, and even raised the dead. He continues to restore strength to us who
are weakened and paralyzed by our passions.
We find healing as we become “partakers of the divine nature” by grace, sharing
in the eternal life of the God-Man even as we remain flesh and blood in the
world as we know it.
Christ certainly “fulfilled the law and the
prophets,” but He did not come simply to give us a new set of laws to obey
according to our own moral strength. (Matt.
5:17) As today’s gospel reading shows, He not only forgives our sins but restores
us as His beautiful living icons. The
Savior forgave the sins of the paralyzed man, showing His divinity in a way
that scandalized religious leaders. But
He also revealed that His salvation is not defined in legalistic terms, as
though the whole point of the Christian life were to be declared innocent in a
court of law for certain offenses. If
that were the case, there would have been no point in healing the paralyzed
man, for he could have been acquitted of his sins while remaining unable to
move. If that had been the case, the
only change would have been in how the Lord viewed him, not in the man himself.
This fellow’s paralysis is a vivid icon of humanity
cast out of Paradise, corrupted by our collective and personal refusal to
pursue the fulfillment of our calling to become like God in holiness. By disorienting ourselves from our true
vocation and entrusting ourselves to our self-centered desires, we have
diminished ourselves to the point of becoming as weak as a man unable to get up
off the ground. Christ responded to him
with healing mercy, granting strength and restoration beyond what he could ever
have given himself, no matter how hard he tried. In response to the Savior’s gracious therapy,
the man obeyed the command to stand up, pick up his bed, and walk home. Apart from this encounter with the Lord, he
would have remained enslaved to debilitating weakness, but the Savior’s healing
restored his ability to move forward as a person who bears the image and
likeness of God.
Whenever we ask for the Lord’s mercy, we are asking
for the same therapy that He extended to the paralyzed man. We ask Him to heal our wounds, restore our
strength, and help us become participants in the eternal joy for which He
created us. We ask Him to deliver us
from the wretched, corrupt state of being so weak before our passions that we
feel helpless before our familiar temptations, no matter how much we despise
them. We ask Him to help us find healing from the ingrained habits of thought,
word, and deed that have made us and our neighbors miserable time and time
again.
To rise, take up our beds, and walk home requires
obedience to Christ’s commands, but not a legalistic obedience in the sense of
following a code for its own sake. To
the contrary, this obedience is like following the guidance of a physician or
therapist who tells us what we must do in order to regain health and function
for our bodies. We must do our part to become
physically healthy but can hardly take credit for the God-given ability of our
bodies to grow in strength. Like the man
in today’s gospel reading, we must obey in order to embrace His healing without
falling into the self-righteous delusion that we have somehow healed ourselves.
Christ calls us to nothing short of
being perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, which is possible only because
He shares with us His victory over the power of death in all its forms. The healthier we are spiritually, the more we
will be aware of our dependence upon His mercy and of our ongoing need for
further strength.
The healing of the paralyzed man began when people carried
him on his bed to the Lord. “[W]hen Jesus saw
their faith He said to the paralytic, ‘Take heart, my son; your sins are
forgiven.’” This remarkable detail
reminds us that we do not relate to Christ as isolated individuals but as
members of His Body, the Church. We can
put no limits on how the Lord may use our faith, prayers, and obedience to
manifest His blessing, forgiveness, and healing in the life of anyone. The focus
of our devotion to Christ must not be self-centered but an offering of
ourselves for the Lord to use as He sees fit to accomplish His gracious
purposes. That is why St. Paul writes in today’s epistle reading, “having gifts
that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them… Never flag in
zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, and serve the Lord. Rejoice in your hope, be
patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.” He knew that we have different gifts and callings “for the equipping of the saints for the
work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of
Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the
knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature
of the fullness of Christ.” (Eph. 4:12-13)
St. Paul refers to
all members of the Body of Christ as saints because we share by grace in the
holiness of God. The Church formally recognizes as saints those who shine so
brilliantly with holiness that they are examples to all of what healing from
the paralysis of sin looks like in a human person. They are the “great cloud of witnesses” encouraging
us to entrust ourselves fully to Christ as we press on in the journey of
faithfulness. (Heb. 12:1-2) We ask for
their prayers because they intercede for us as fellow members of the Body of
Christ who have entered into heavenly glory.
By their prayers, faith, and example, they bring us all to Christ for
healing. They also call us to follow
their example in strengthening one another, for as St. James wrote, “The prayer
of a righteous person is powerful and effective… if one of you should wander
from the truth and someone should bring that person back, remember
this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them
from death and cover over a multitude of sins.” (Jas. 5: 16, 19-20).
Today we
commemorate Saint Paisios the New of Athos, who in the 20th century
counseled and cured thousands of people from addictions and diseases. He is a shining example of humble piety
through whom God worked many miracles. He said that “If one becomes humble, he can
instantly be immersed in divine Grace, become an angel and find himself in
Paradise. On the contrary, if he becomes
prideful, he can turn into a devil in a moment’s time and find himself in Hell…[O]ne
can become a lamb if he wants to; he can also become a goat if he wants to…. God
has given us humans the ability to change from being a goat to being a lamb---it
is enough that we want to do so. The
Grace of God is extended only to the humble and meek person.”[1]
If we are truly
humble and meek, we will cooperate with our Lord’s gracious calling to rise,
take up our beds, and walk. We will endure
the daily struggle to receive His healing of our souls through prayer, fasting,
generosity, and repentance. We will exercise
our spiritual gifts for the strengthening of one another as members together of
the Body of Christ. His salvation is not a matter of law but of
therapy. It is not a matter of
self-reliance but of receptivity to grace by faith and faithfulness. To obey the Savior’s command is not a burden
but the greatest blessing of all.
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