"The paralysis of our heart can only be healed if we come crawling before Christ, climbing up trees or lowered through roofs. Come crawling this Lent, my brothers and sisters, to this holy church and seek out the Lord for your healing. The services of the Church during this season are all about this healing. Come to Holy Confession and ask for the forgiveness that the paralytic received from Christ before he took up his bed and walked. Receive the precious Body and Blood of Christ, for it is truly medicine for our souls. Be anointed with his holy oil for it heals the flesh..."

Sermon on the Second Sunday of Lent

“Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Arise, take up your bed and walk’? (Mark 2:9).

In today’s Gospel reading, this the Second Sunday of Great Lent, we hear of a great miracle—of a man, paralyzed and immobile, coming to Christ to be healed. As if to counter the zeal of the tax collector Zacchaeus, who climbed up into a sycamore tree to catch a glimpse of Christ, the paralytic is lowered down through a roof by four men in order to receive the blessings of the Lord. Like the short tax collector Zacchaeus, who started us on our journey to Lent some six weeks ago, the paralytic comes to us, struggling to reach Christ, as we embark on the second week of the Great Fast, struggling to reach the empty tomb and Holy Pascha.

We hear of this miracle and we are amazed. As humans, trapped as we are by the limits of our own thoughts, we are naturally astounded to see the paralyzed walk. We think of our own physical ailments. We are drawn to the physical suffering of our friends and relatives and hope and pray that as the paralytic was healed, so too might they and we also be healed. We long for our bodies, we cling to our earthly existence, and we cringe at the idea of losing our health—of being like the paralytic, bed ridden and unable to walk. We cry out to Christ with the fervor of the psalmist who said, “O Lord I cry out to you, Lord hear my prayer.” (Psalm 140).

But then, as now, Christ challenges us by asking us, “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Arise, take up your bed and walk’?” This, the second week of Lent, we all should ask ourselves if we care for the condition of our souls as much as we do for the condition of our bodies. For as Christ and the fathers of the Church, such as Clement of Alexandria, instruct us, “The healing of body and soul occurs interconnectedly.”

When we pray, when we approach God in supplication, what do we ask for? Do we care as much for our souls as for our bodies? Is our salvation and desire for eternal life of the same importance to us as our earthly existence? My brothers and sisters, these are difficult questions to answer ‘yes’ to. For, our bodies are concrete and tangible things that are known to us, whereas our souls seem to be something abstract and remote. Thus we cling to the flesh and pray that Christ saves it with nary a thought for the soul that animates it.

If we are to be truly concerned with the condition of our bodies, however, we should be most concerned with the character of our souls. For the body flourishes when it is nourished by the soul. This is exactly why we address Christ as “Physician of our souls and bodies.” As Clement of Alexandria so eloquently states, the story of the paralytic shows us that soul and body are healed “conjointly” by the “all-sufficient Physician of humanity.”

If Christ is the physician then, the Church is His hospital. We are all patients in this hospital, we who assemble here today. Like any doctor, Christ, the physician of our souls and bodies, prescribes medicine for us as therapy to heal this sickness. Holy Communion, Confession, Euchelion (the anointing with oil), and the other sacraments of the Church are this medicine which has been prescribed for us by Christ to effect this healing. And make no mistake about it, we can be like any other patient, who is prescribed a treatment by their physician yet fails to take the medicine prescribed or refuses to receive the necessary therapy and rehabilitation.

What happens then is a matter of course. The patient’s illness becomes exacerbated and the sickness worsens. As often is the case, the patient blames the physician or the medicine or both. Who then is really to blame—and what then are we to do?

The first step to any healing is the recognition that there is an illness. Like those who deny their illness, until it is too late to heal it, even with the strongest medicine, we are often in a state of denial with regard to our spiritual sickness. Often we think of ourselves as the publican who, in a self-congratulatory tone, said “God I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector” (Luke 18:13). We see ourselves as spiritually healthy and everyone else as being sick.

We need to approach Christ’s Holy Church with the eagerness of Zacchaeus and the humility of the Publican all the time knowing that we are all paralytics needing to be lowered through the roof in order to be healed by Christ. For as the blessed Augustine says, “You have been a paralytic inwardly. You did not take charge of your bed. Your bed took charge of you” (Oden, p. 29).

We become paralyzed when we give ourselves over to the passions of the flesh and concerns for the things of this world, when we should instead be nourishing our souls and looking towards things that are divine. For when we nourish our souls, with the sweet water of Christ’s Gospel and the life-giving bread of His precious Body and Blood, then and only then will our bodies become truly whole and healed. When we focus on the divine, then Christ will shower us with manna from heaven as He did the Israelites in the wilderness. This is the holistic therapy of the great physician that needs to be taken by every human soul. If we do not partake of it, then we shall surely die.

However, in this very modern world what do we do? We seek out “psychotherapists to find peace and comfort” (Orthodox Psychotherapy, p. 15). Do we even stop to think what the term psychotherapy means? It means “the healing of the soul.” In today’s world, society finds it perfectly normal to seek out the advice of men in healing that which is given to us by God. But as Metropolian Hierotheos of Nafpaktos tells us, the soul cannot be healed through “human methods” but only “with the help and energy of divine grace” (ibid., p. 15).

People speak of someone not being of sound mind when in reality they are not of sound soul. For if the soul is of sound character, than there is peace and there is contentment. Our dysfunction comes when our soul ceases to be in communion with God and instead becomes focused on ourselves. At once we become selfish and self-centered. Satisfying ourselves is all we seek—preservation of our bodies, the comforts of the flesh, the accumulation of wealth—this is all that matters. Love of God and love of neighbor become impediments to our own perceived well being. We become isolated and alone, incapable of loving and unable to be loved. The psychotherapy of man seeks to heal us, but at the end of the day, because it is an invention of man, it is unable to come to grips with the nature of our souls that were given to us by God and can only be healed by Him.

The paralysis of our heart can only be healed if we come crawling before Christ, climbing up trees or lowered through roofs. Come crawling this Lent my brothers and sisters to this holy church and seek out the Lord for your healing. The services of the Church during this season are all about this healing. Come to Holy Confession and ask for the forgiveness that the paralytic received from Christ before he took up his bed and walked. Receive the precious Body and Blood of Christ, for it is truly medicine for our souls. Be anointed with his holy oil for it heals the flesh. And partake of the divine light that shines forth from His tomb on Pascha for it shines on us and illumines our souls and speaks to us of the true reality that is the life to come.

We are all paralyzed, sometimes in body, more often in our souls. As we lie spiritually crippled on our beds, know that Christ is waiting here this Lent calling us to His Holy Church and sacred mysteries. Know that he will say to those who partake worthily, “Arise take up your bed and walk.”

May God bless you and keep you—In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Rev. Fr. Demetrios E. Tonias is the pastor of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Concord, NH, one of many "Share the Light Parishes" around the country that partner with the Orthodox Christian Network in a cooperative effort to build an effective media outreach for Orthodoxy. Fr. Demetrios, whose articles and sermons regularly appear on MyOCN.net, holds an M.Div. and Th.M. from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology and is currently enrolled in the Ph.D. program in historical theology at Boston College. You can read more written by Fr. Demetrios and listen to his parish's OCN-produced Internet radio station, by visiting Holy Trinity's Web site.

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