The Sorrowful Reality

A Word on the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Child, your sins are forgiven you (Mt 9:2)

In the Gospel reading for today, the account is of the mercy of our common Savior toward man in his misery, and the Gospel of the past Sunday likewise spoke of His mercy: then it spoke of the healing of the demoniacs, who were terribly suffering from evil spirits, while now it speaks of the healing of the paralytic; there the cause of the calamity and misfortune was sins, as is evident from the instruction Jesus Christ gave to the man He had healed: Go to your own people, and tell them all that the Lord has done for you and how He has had mercy on you[1]. And here too the cause of the paralysis of the bodily members, and of the soul itself, was sins, for the Physician of souls and bodies says to the sick man: “Child, your sins are forgiven you.” The whole Gospel, beloved brothers and sisters, is filled with the account of the wondrous deeds of mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ toward men who suffer calamity and go astray; and everywhere in it is proclaimed that the chief cause of almost all the illnesses, troubles, and misfortunes that befall people is sins—this greatest of evils, this calamity of the human race, this dreadful root of all evils and of the greatest evil of all, temporal and eternal death. For that reason the Lord, in healing the paralytic, first heals the soul that is sick with sins, and only afterward the body. “Child! — He says to the paralytic—your sins are forgiven you.” And this means, and teaches us, that in our illnesses we must humbly and deeply acknowledge our sins and sincerely repent of them and ask the Lord to forgive them, with the resolve not to sin any more hereafter.

For the chief part of our being is the soul, a being made in the image of God, rational, endowed with free choice, immortal, yet a fallen being, sick with sin and corruption, and redeemed from sin and death by the death of the Son of God; it is about the soul, then, about its salvation, that we must take care with all our strength—about pleasing God, about fulfilling His holy and blessed commandments, about its uprightness and holiness. For the passions of the flesh enslave and defile the soul and draw it away from God, and in the end they often bring it to perdition, temporal and eternal. Look at the drunkard: he is forever enfeebled in soul and body, there is no faith or fear of God in him; he does not pray; all the moral foundations in him are shaken loose; he is ready for any wickedness: he grows angry, scolds, brawls, defiles himself with filth, and nothing goes right for him; every task drops from his hands. Look at a man who loves to eat and drink a great deal: he too is enfeebled, and therefore slothful and clumsy; just as moderate food and drink strengthen the body, so an excess of them burdens and enfeebles it. And the lustful man is, as it were, weakness embodied, and often dies in soul and body while still alive. Thus sins enfeeble the whole being of man, and whole societies and states! Thus sins and the passions of society enfeeble Russia as well. What sins have flooded over Russia? — Unbelief, drunkenness, swindling, falsehood and deceit, the passion for gain, the frequent murders committed out of the passion for gain or out of ungratified fleshly love, the passion for gambling, embezzlement, the taking of bribes, self-love, which desires solely that it alone may fare well, be rich and merry, while others may just as well die of hunger.

Yes, one cannot fail to see in Russia a general relaxation of morals, and as a consequence of this relaxation of morals public calamities are increasing: famine, a shortage of money, the impoverishment of the people, an inclination and urge to move from place to place, malicious arson, and the like. What, then, is to be done? I will say with the apostle: Strengthen the hands that have drooped and the knees that have grown weak; and walk straight with your feet, so that what is limping may not be turned aside, but rather be healed. Take care that no one is deprived of the grace of God; that no bitter root, springing up, causes harm, and that many are not defiled by it.[2] Let us strengthen our souls and hearts with the grace of God, as the apostle Paul teaches: It is good to establish hearts with grace, and not with foods, from which those who walked in them received no benefit.[3] Let us establish our souls with sincere prayer—at home and in church—and, in general, with unceasing inward prayer; with the reading or hearing of the word of God or of the writings of the holy God-wise fathers; with diligent reading or hearing of the lives of God’s holy saints, so that we too may imitate their faith and their way of life, their good deeds; and likewise with spiritual conversation, and especially with heartfelt confession and frequent Communion of the holy Mysteries.

So then, let us strengthen ourselves with the grace of God while there is still time, and before sins have utterly enfeebled us. For the time will soon come—perhaps it is already coming—when all will give themselves over to drowsiness and sleep, when all will become morally enfeebled, when faith itself will fail, and love will run dry, and lawlessness will spread over the earth like the sea. But then it will already be too late to set oneself right. For a voice will ring out: The Bridegroom is coming; go out to meet Him.[4] The archangel’s trumpet will thunder and gather all people, the living and those raised from the dead, to the place of the general Dread Judgment, where the final righteous sentence will be pronounced—either to eternal life or to eternal torment. Amen.