A Word for the Sixth Sunday After Pentecost

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

Today we heard read the Gospel from Matthew, of the Lord’s healing of a paralytic, brought to Him on a bed. It reads thus: «At that time Jesus came to Capernaum. And behold, they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed. And Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the paralytic: be of good cheer, child! your sins are forgiven you. And at this, some of the scribes thought within themselves: this man blasphemes. But Jesus, seeing their thoughts, said: why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, «your sins are forgiven you,» or to say, «rise and walk»? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins—then He said to the paralytic: rise, take up your bed, and go to your house. And he arose and departed to his house. Now when the crowds saw it, they marveled and glorified God, who had given such authority to men» (Mt 9:1-8). Here ends the Gospel. And in today’s Gospel reading we hear of the mercy of our common Savior toward an unfortunate man, and in last Sunday’s Gospel too there was talk of His mercy; then it spoke of the healing of the demon-possessed, who suffered terribly from evil spirits, and now it speaks of the healing of a paralytic; there the cause of the calamity and misfortune was sin, as we see from Jesus Christ’s moral lesson to the man He healed at the Sheep’s Pool: «see, you are made well: sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you» (Jn 5:14). And here too the cause of the paralysis of his bodily members, and of his very soul, was sin; 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 works of mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ toward suffering and erring men; and everywhere in it, too, it is proclaimed that the chief cause of almost all sicknesses, calamities, and misfortunes among people is sin—this greatest evil, this misfortune of the human race, this fearsome root of all evils and of the greatest evil of all—temporal and eternal death. This is why the Lord, in healing the paralytic, heals first the soul, sick with sin, and only then the body. «Child!» He says to the paralytic, «your sins are forgiven you». And this means, and teaches us, that in our sicknesses we ought to acknowledge our sins humbly and deeply, and repent of them sincerely, and ask the Lord’s forgiveness for them, with the intention of sinning no more. For the chief part of our being is the soul—a being made in the image of God, rational, with a free will, immortal, but a being fallen, sick with sin and corruption, and redeemed from sin and death by the death of the Son of God; it is for this soul, for its salvation, that we must care with all our strength—for pleasing God, for keeping His holy and blessed commandments, for its righteousness and holiness. For the passions of the flesh enslave the soul, defile it, estrange it from God, and in the end often bring it to temporal and eternal ruin. Look at the drunkard: he is forever paralyzed in soul and body, there is no faith or fear of God in him; he does not pray; every moral foundation in him is shaken; he is ready for every evil—he grows angry, curses, fights, defiles himself; and nothing goes well for him, every task falls from his hands. Look at the man who loves to eat and drink too much: he too is paralyzed, and therefore lazy, sluggish; just as moderate food and drink strengthen the body, so their excess burdens and weakens it. And the man given to voluptuousness is, as it were, weakness itself made flesh, often dying alive in soul and body. Thus do sins weaken the whole being of a man—and whole societies, whole states!

So too do sins and social passions weaken Russia. What sins have flooded Russia? Unbelief, drunkenness, roguery, lying and deceit, a passion for gain, frequent murders arising from a passion for gain or from unsatisfied fleshly desire, a passion for gambling, plunder, bribery, self-love, which desires exclusively that things go well, richly, and merrily for itself alone, though others may starve to death. Yes, one cannot fail to see, in Russia, a general weakening of morals, and, as a consequence of this weakening of morals, social calamities grow: famine, want of money, the impoverishment of the people, an inclination and drive to migrate from place to place, malicious arson, and the rest. What, then, is to be done? Let me say, with the Apostle: «strengthen the hands that hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed» (Hebr 12:12-13). «Look diligently lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled» (Deut 29:18; Hebr 12:15). Let us strengthen our souls and hearts with the grace of God, as the Apostle Paul teaches: «for it is good that the heart be established by grace, not with foods, which have not profited those who have been occupied with them» (Hebr 13:9). Let us confirm our souls through sincere prayer—private and public—and, in general, through unceasing inward prayer, through the reading or hearing of the Word of God or the writings of the holy, God-wise fathers, through the earnest reading or hearing of the lives of the holy servants of God, that we too might imitate their faith and their life, their good deeds; and also through spiritual conversation, and especially through sincere 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 our sins have weakened us beyond recovery. For a time will soon come—perhaps it is already coming—when all will give themselves over to drowsiness and sleep, all will grow weak in morals, when faith too will grow scarce, and love will run dry, and lawlessness will spread over the earth like a sea. But then it will already be too late to amend. For a voice will resound: «behold, the Bridegroom comes, go out to meet Him» (Mt 25:6); the archangel’s trumpet will thunder, and gather all the living, and all who have risen from the dead, to the place of the general Dread Judgment, at which the final, righteous sentence will be pronounced—either to eternal life, or to eternal torment. Amen.