6th Sunday after Pentecost

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Christian, according to his calling or vocation, is one who is forbidden from harboring any evil against others in prayer. Or during prayer.

In today's Gospel, once again, we see this topic of healing. A topic which seems often to be the cause of commotion in Scripture. On the one hand, healing would appear to be something pretty straightforward. It's a good thing. What's wrong with that? But is everybody happy about it?

As we heard today, "Then behold, they brought Him a paralytic lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, 'Son, be of good cheer. Your sins are forgiven you.' And at once some of the scribes said within themselves, 'This man blasphemes.' But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, 'Why do you think evil in your hearts? Which is easier to say, "Your sins are forgiven you," or to say, "Arise and walk?" But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins'—He said to the paralytic—'Arise, take up your bed, and go to your home.' And he arose and departed to his house. And when the multitude saw it, they marveled and glorified God, who had given power to men."

The Lord forgives the sins of the paralytic. And yet, as St. Theophan remarks on today's Gospel, "One should rejoice at the Lord's mercy, but the crafty mind of the learned scribe says, 'He blasphemes.'" Even when the miracle of healing of the paralytic is given alongside the comforting truth that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins. Yes, the scribes rejected the Lord and His divine authority. But there is another lesson here. And that is, it was not the faith of these learned men who commanded deep knowledge of the Scripture and devoted so much of their lives to works of piety that healed the paralytic. But it was the simple faith of the unlearned crowd.

And what was their faith? The Apostle Paul tells us, "We struggle not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities of darkness." In our own time, it may seem to us that we are becoming more and more surrounded by darkness. And what other refuge do we have than to cling to the church and to our traditions of piety and our struggle against the immorality which only seems to grow more and more in our world? But this very sentiment is undoubtedly also the same sentiment of the scribes in today's Gospel. Yet how are we not supposed to look at these things that we see and struggle against every day with anything other than hostility? What are we commanded? "Be angry and sin not." We are to turn our anger against our sins to wage a battle. But how are we supposed to do this with respect to our neighbor, with respect to those around us?

Today's Gospel gives us a way, and in this way we discover the way of true faith. That the Lord forgives the sins of the paralytic and only then raises him up from his bed of sickness shows us that sin is disease. But some, seeing this disease, desire simply to separate themselves in order not to compromise their sense of purity. Never mind the blindness of this approach. This approach is also fragile and passive. It's easy. But the Christian is called to wage a far more ruthless struggle.

I recently witnessed a remarkable conversation between two people. An older, deeply pious woman, mature in her faith, tenderly placed her hands on the shoulders of a young Christian mother and said, "The light we have, that you find in me as a friend, you would be unable to see if you did not first have it in yourself. The light we seek to find in others we must acquire first in ourselves. And yet sometimes when I look at the faces of certain people I become troubled. I feel repulsion. But then I come to realize that the reason I am repulsed is because of the very thing that I see in myself that repulses me. And I pray for them as for myself."

The crowds bore the paralytic upon themselves and brought him to the Lord. Today's Gospel is one of several places in Scripture where healings occur not at the request of the one who is sick, but by the petitions of others, because of the faith of others. There is no such thing as a Christian who prays alone. Even in the corners of a desert, a solitary monk, as a member of the body of Christ, prays as a part of the whole Church. Each Christian is a custodian of the divine grace that we receive at baptism. We become members of the New Jerusalem, the priestly nation, carrying the Lord within us wherever we are. Just like St. Seraphim teaches, we pray for others and we pray for ourselves, and thus much of humanity is purified. We must never underestimate the power of prayer or neglect intercessory prayer. Even in the first century, Ignatius the God-bearer in his epistles commanded others not only to pray for others, to pray for the faithful, but to fast for them.

And this is the beauty and the grace of the Psalms. Oftentimes, many people are troubled by expressions or feelings in the verses of the Book of Psalms that appear to be sinful, that express anger, weakness, irritation, where the voice of the Psalmist blames others and even wishes evil for them. But the Psalms show us as we are. They are a mirror, and we bring or bear ourselves before God and say, "Here I am. This is me." And God heals us. The Psalms teach us to feel the struggles of other people. They express anger or even a desire for revenge, and we, seeing this suffering, are able to look upon others with understanding. Igumen Arseny Sokolov once wonderfully put it, "We not only pray for others as for ourselves, but we pray for ourselves as for others."

What was it that the crowds had that the scribes in today's Gospel did not? Compassion. The meaning of the word compassion—the Latin root, pati, means "to suffer." Compati means "to share in suffering," to share in the sufferings of others. Prayer for others is the way of Christ. It is to take the sufferings of others upon our own shoulders. This is the work of the crowd in today's Gospel, and this is the work that all of us are called to do. The work which the Lord himself accomplishes for all of humanity and accomplishes within us, waging a war against evil.

And this is what we do at every single divine service, at every Vespers, at every Matins, and at every Liturgy, again and again. In peace, we bring ourselves together as custodians of the grace and presence of God who dwells within us—where two or three are gathered, there I am also—and we bring our humanity to God as a part of the whole of humanity in this co-suffering sacrifice, this offering on behalf of the whole world for healing. Let us all say with our whole soul and with all our minds, let us say, "Lord, have mercy."

Prayer is the life of the Christian. It is our breath. It is with us at all times. In praying for others, we pray for ourselves. And in praying for ourselves, we pray for the world. And so we come to participate, really, in the co-suffering love of God. Beloved in Christ, there is much suffering in the world. And we do not need to look very far to find it. Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. Amen.