A Word for the 24th Sunday After Pentecost

Today’s Gospel, beloved brothers and sisters, proclaims to us the almighty power of the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Giver of life, who grants to all life and breath, as well as health to the incurably sick, and every natural and gracious, every ordinary and supernatural, gift: for today’s Gospel speaks of the Lord’s raising from the dead of the daughter of Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, and of the healing of the woman with the flow of blood, who had suffered from her ailment for twelve years, and could not be cured by any physicians. I will not repeat the details of the account of these miracles, since you heard them in the Gospel reading itself, but will try only to draw from it instruction and edification for myself and for you. The direct teaching, directly disclosed by the sacred account of the raising of Jairus’s daughter, is that there will assuredly be a resurrection of the dead, for the Lord raised the dead, as is evident from the Gospel, chiefly in order to show that He Himself is the resurrection and the life and the God of all. «I am, He says, the resurrection and the life» (Jn 11:25); the moral lesson is that all of us must pass the whole of this present life with a watchful heart and a sober mind, awaiting the general resurrection of the dead and the fearsome day of the Lord of glory’s appearing from heaven, with all His Angels, at His second and fearsome coming. Another teaching, likewise true and certain, though not so directly drawn from the Gospel reading we have heard, is that, even before our bodily death, all of us die every day, every hour, in our own souls, falling into countless sins—that is, we die spiritually—and that for those dying a spiritual death there is also a spiritual, or soul’s, resurrection, granted by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ to all truly repentant sinners; and the rule, or commandment, the moral lesson from this, is that every sinner, if he wishes to escape the eternal death of the soul before his own ordinary, natural, bodily death, must, by unceasing repentance, rise up, or be resurrected, from the death of the soul to life—that is, he must accustom himself to live according to the Lord’s commandments, which are our own life and peace, must subdue his own passions, must rule over them, must put them to death, must strive to make every virtue his own, so that it becomes, as it were, natural to him, penetrates his whole soul, his own flesh and blood, and wraps itself, as it were, around his very ribs and all his inward parts—just as, in unrepentant sinners, or, in general, in those who sin grievously, sin and passion penetrate the whole mind, the whole heart, the whole will, the whole flesh and blood, even the very bones. Brothers and sisters! Spiritual resurrection is necessary for us—that is, it is necessary for us to take care, with all our strength, for the raising of our own souls from the death of sin before our own bodily death; for otherwise the death of the soul will be eternal. Would you like to see the fearsome, repulsive image of sinful death, which envelops the sinner? Hear what the ecumenical teacher, Saint John Chrysostom, says of this. «Repulsively foul-smelling is a soul given over to sin: it becomes, as it were, a tomb, containing every kind of stench. And for the one in whom Christ once dwelt, and the Holy Spirit acted, in whom so many Mysteries were accomplished, to become a tomb—what a calamity! What weeping and lamentation it deserves, when the members of Christ—that is, Christians—become a tomb, filled with impurity! Reflect on how you were born, of what you were counted worthy, what garment you received; how you became an incorruptible, beautiful temple, adorned not with gold or pearls, but with the Holy Spirit, which is incomparably more precious than these. Consider that no city allows even a single coffin with a corpse within its walls; and so neither can you appear in the heavenly city. If this is forbidden here, how much more there. Or rather, even here people would mock you, if you were to go about carrying a dead man, and they would not only mock you, but flee from you. Tell me: if someone carried a dead body about with him everywhere, would not everyone at once draw back and flee from him? Reason in the same way about the present case. You present a far more fearsome spectacle: you carry about everywhere a soul dead through sins, a soul given over to decay. Who will pity such a person? If you yourself do not pity your own soul, will anyone else pity so cruel and ruinous an enemy to himself? If someone were to bury a dead body in your bedroom or your dining room, what would you not do? But you bury your own soul, not in a dining room or a bedroom, but among the members of Christ, and are you not afraid that a thousand thunders and lightnings might strike your own head down from heaven? How, then, do you dare to walk into the church of God and into holy temples, being filled within with such a repulsive stench?

If someone brought a corpse into the royal palace and laid it there, he would suffer the harshest punishment. But you enter the sacred enclosure and fill the house of God with such a stench; consider, what punishment you deserve? But you do not sense the stench? This is the utmost degree of sickness! It means that your sickness is incurable; that it is far worse than the sickness of those whose body decays and gives off a foul smell. This latter sickness makes itself felt by the sufferer, and deserves no blame at all—indeed, deserves pity—but the former deserves only revulsion and torment. Consider what you say when you sing: «let my prayer be set forth as incense» before You (Ps 140:2). But if it is not incense, but a foul smoke that rises up from you and from your deeds, then what punishment do you deserve?» But enough from Chrysostom. All that has been said above I have borrowed from the ecumenical teacher, in order to characterize more clearly, more strikingly, more vividly, the spiritual death which every sinner dies every day, and which, nevertheless, many do not feel, and therefore do not see their own danger, and take no care for repentance and amendment.

On the occasion of Jesus Christ’s healing of the woman whom no physicians could cure, let me say to myself and to you this moral lesson: that in every sickness and weakness of soul and body, we must, before all else, turn, with the prayer of faith, in heartfelt repentance, to our own almighty Physician of souls and bodies, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is swift to help and to save. The woman with the flow of blood, by faith alone, snatched healing from the Lord in a single instant, from a long-standing, grievous infirmity: and we too will not be refused any mercy of His, if we continually, with unwavering faith, in unfeigned repentance, have recourse to Him in our sorrows and sicknesses. He Himself says to us: call upon Me in the day of your trouble, and I will deliver you (Ps 17:7,33:5), and you shall glorify Me. To Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.