Your sins are forgiven... Arise and take up your bed and go to your house (Mt. 9:2,6)
I’ll begin my sermon with a word that expresses all that is grand and noble, all that is exalted and magnificent. And this word is “Christ.”
Oh Christ! He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end (Rev. 21:6, 22:13). Christ is everything. You should love Him more than your husband, more than your wife, more than your children, more than your mother, more than anything else. And woe if we don’t love Him - we’ll be worthy of reproach. I’d like to believe that here amongst us, there isn’t a single mouth that disrespects Him and blasphemes His name. Those who blaspheme Christ aren’t worthy to be called human.
Christ is not simply a person - He is God. “We don’t believe that,” say the atheists. “We want proof.” We answer that there are millions of testimonies concerning the divinity of Christ. The miracles that Christ performed, performs and will perform until the end of the age, to the shame of His enemies, are clear proof of His divinity. We have a living faith. Our Lord is true, great and sublime. Who is so great a God as our God? (Ps. 76:14-15).
One of Christ’s miracles is narrated in today’s Gospel reading, a double miracle. What does this mean? Let me explain.
Oh Christ! He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end (Rev. 21:6, 22:13). Christ is everything. You should love Him more than your husband, more than your wife, more than your children, more than your mother, more than anything else. And woe if we don’t love Him - we’ll be worthy of reproach. I’d like to believe that here amongst us, there isn’t a single mouth that disrespects Him and blasphemes His name. Those who blaspheme Christ aren’t worthy to be called human.
Christ is not simply a person - He is God. “We don’t believe that,” say the atheists. “We want proof.” We answer that there are millions of testimonies concerning the divinity of Christ. The miracles that Christ performed, performs and will perform until the end of the age, to the shame of His enemies, are clear proof of His divinity. We have a living faith. Our Lord is true, great and sublime. Who is so great a God as our God? (Ps. 76:14-15).
One of Christ’s miracles is narrated in today’s Gospel reading, a double miracle. What does this mean? Let me explain.
***
Man is bifold, visible and invisible; he has a material body but also an immortal soul.
Our body is mortal (Earth you are and to earth you will return. Gen 3:19), it consists of material substances. If scientists were to take our body to the chemical laboratory and analyse it, they would find it consists of cheap substances. The greatest percentage of the body is made up of water. The body also comprises enough fat to make a few bars of soap; it has enough iron to make a nail; it contains enough lime to whitewash one room; it has enough phosphorus to make 4-5 matchboxes and there is enough lead to make a few pencils. That’s what man is. Since scientists know that, let them take those elements and make a human. Can they? They can’t make anything: not even one eye, or an ear, or a lung, or a heart. The human body is a fantastic thing, and that alone is enough to prove the divinity of its Creator.
But besides the body, there is the spirit. And just as nobody doubts the existence of the body, in the same way they shouldn’t doubt the existence of the other element, which is of incalculable value - i.e. the soul. Many people say they believe only in what they see, while the soul is not visible... but how many things do we believe in, that we can’t see?! Can we see electricity? Yet nobody doubts its existence. If someone doubts, and grabs the electricity wires, they will be burnt. Can we see magnetic force? And yet we don’t doubt its existence, looking at a compass. And we believe in many other such things. Of course, the soul is invisible, but there are visible manifestations of it. The soul thinks, feels, acts, chooses either bad or good. And here is the mystery: how one person might choose the good path and become like an angel on earth, while another person might become a Judas. Once, people chose to do good more frequently, and earth was paradise. Now almost everyone chooses to do evil, and earth resembles hell.
So man is bifold, he has a body and a soul. The soul is superior to the body. But we only care for our body, our hide. We do everything for our body. Nobody said not to look after our body, since God also gave us that, but if we take a little care for our body, how much more care should we take for our soul! This is what todays Gospel reading teaches us, with the double miracle that Christ performed.
Our body is mortal (Earth you are and to earth you will return. Gen 3:19), it consists of material substances. If scientists were to take our body to the chemical laboratory and analyse it, they would find it consists of cheap substances. The greatest percentage of the body is made up of water. The body also comprises enough fat to make a few bars of soap; it has enough iron to make a nail; it contains enough lime to whitewash one room; it has enough phosphorus to make 4-5 matchboxes and there is enough lead to make a few pencils. That’s what man is. Since scientists know that, let them take those elements and make a human. Can they? They can’t make anything: not even one eye, or an ear, or a lung, or a heart. The human body is a fantastic thing, and that alone is enough to prove the divinity of its Creator.
But besides the body, there is the spirit. And just as nobody doubts the existence of the body, in the same way they shouldn’t doubt the existence of the other element, which is of incalculable value - i.e. the soul. Many people say they believe only in what they see, while the soul is not visible... but how many things do we believe in, that we can’t see?! Can we see electricity? Yet nobody doubts its existence. If someone doubts, and grabs the electricity wires, they will be burnt. Can we see magnetic force? And yet we don’t doubt its existence, looking at a compass. And we believe in many other such things. Of course, the soul is invisible, but there are visible manifestations of it. The soul thinks, feels, acts, chooses either bad or good. And here is the mystery: how one person might choose the good path and become like an angel on earth, while another person might become a Judas. Once, people chose to do good more frequently, and earth was paradise. Now almost everyone chooses to do evil, and earth resembles hell.
So man is bifold, he has a body and a soul. The soul is superior to the body. But we only care for our body, our hide. We do everything for our body. Nobody said not to look after our body, since God also gave us that, but if we take a little care for our body, how much more care should we take for our soul! This is what todays Gospel reading teaches us, with the double miracle that Christ performed.
***
It refers to a paralyzed man who couldn’t move not just his hand or foot, but his whole body, he was completely paralyzed, nailed to his bed. Others fed him. In Athens in the Asylum for the Terminally Ill, I met a young man aged 25, who had become completely paralyzed from his profligate lifestyle, and a nurse had to feed him. My God, what is a man reduced to when he distances himself from You! The cause of all evil is sin. The same thing happened to the man in the Gospel - he was as if dead. And just like it takes four people to carry a coffin into the church [for a funeral], in the same way four compassionate people carried this man to Christ.
What was everyone expecting? That Christ would say to him, “arise and walk.” But Christ didn’t say this immediately. He did something else, something superior. He firstly healed the man’s soul, the cause of his physical affliction. He told him: Be of good courage, child, your sins have been forgiven you (Mt. 9:2).
What Christ did was much more important. The scribes and Pharisees were scandalized, however, and murmured: Who is this who forgives sins? Then Christ, after healing the soul that had been afflicted by sin —which is the most fearful evil— commanded the man to arise. And as if an electrical current had passed through his body, the man, who previously couldn’t even lift a spoon to eat, lifted his bed onto his back and went to his home glorifying God.
What was everyone expecting? That Christ would say to him, “arise and walk.” But Christ didn’t say this immediately. He did something else, something superior. He firstly healed the man’s soul, the cause of his physical affliction. He told him: Be of good courage, child, your sins have been forgiven you (Mt. 9:2).
What Christ did was much more important. The scribes and Pharisees were scandalized, however, and murmured: Who is this who forgives sins? Then Christ, after healing the soul that had been afflicted by sin —which is the most fearful evil— commanded the man to arise. And as if an electrical current had passed through his body, the man, who previously couldn’t even lift a spoon to eat, lifted his bed onto his back and went to his home glorifying God.
***
This is the double miracle that teaches us that we should take an interest in our body, of course, but much more so, for our immortal soul. People lacking in faith say that these are story-tales, the babbling of priests, that there is no soul, there is nothing... Some faithful people say that their faith wavers when: “I see that liar, that dishonest person, that thief and exploiter, with houses, a wife and children, and everything goes well for him, and I, who live according to the Gospel, am not doing so well...” They are scandalized seeing virtue declining and evil triumphing in the world.
But don’t be deceived. There is an eye that sees everything, an ear that hears all, a hand that writes down everything. And sooner or later God will punish them, very often in this life as well. Should I give you some examples? There are many. Once, a magistrate ordered a liar to give an oath, and as soon as that person placed his hand on the Bible, he had a heart-attack and died immediately. He was a perjurer and was punished on the spot. During the war years, when I was an army priest in the high mountains and the bullets were raining down, one soldier was hit by a bullet and died on the spot at the moment he was cursing God. Other people were hit by lightning and burnt at the same moment they cursed God. We know of people who died at the time they were entering houses to defile women.
Sin is fire and we slouldn’t play with it. There will come a day when God will judge everyone, we can be certain of this, since Christ proclaimed it.
But don’t be deceived. There is an eye that sees everything, an ear that hears all, a hand that writes down everything. And sooner or later God will punish them, very often in this life as well. Should I give you some examples? There are many. Once, a magistrate ordered a liar to give an oath, and as soon as that person placed his hand on the Bible, he had a heart-attack and died immediately. He was a perjurer and was punished on the spot. During the war years, when I was an army priest in the high mountains and the bullets were raining down, one soldier was hit by a bullet and died on the spot at the moment he was cursing God. Other people were hit by lightning and burnt at the same moment they cursed God. We know of people who died at the time they were entering houses to defile women.
Sin is fire and we slouldn’t play with it. There will come a day when God will judge everyone, we can be certain of this, since Christ proclaimed it.
However, we shouldn’t despair. All of us sinners should turn to Christ in repentance, and then, like the paralyzed man whose body had yielded to the weight of his sins, we too will hear Christ’s sweet voice saying, Be of good courage, child, your sins have been forgiven you.
Some people ask, “But where is Christ? Where can we find Him? If He was on earth, we’d go to the North Pole and even to the stars to find Him...”
But those who search for Christ in distant places are wrong. Christ is here, in church. Come with faith and you’ll see Him.
But those who search for Christ in distant places are wrong. Christ is here, in church. Come with faith and you’ll see Him.
Do you see the priest? No matter who he is: Fr. Dimitri, Fr. George, Fr. Thomas, or whatever his name is - externally he is a human like us, but as soon as he enters the church and puts on the priest’s stole, he becomes an angel, higher than an angel. That’s how you should view the the priest.
So, my brethren, are you sinners? Are you paralyzed in soul and body? Approach the priest, approach the spiritual father. And when you confess your sins, Paradise will blossom in your hearts. A mountainous weight will be lifted from you. An angel will take your sins and throw them into the vast ocean of divine mercy and compassion and you will hear a voice deep inside you saying, Be of good courage, child, your sins have been forgiven you.
(†) Bishop Augoustinos
So, my brethren, are you sinners? Are you paralyzed in soul and body? Approach the priest, approach the spiritual father. And when you confess your sins, Paradise will blossom in your hearts. A mountainous weight will be lifted from you. An angel will take your sins and throw them into the vast ocean of divine mercy and compassion and you will hear a voice deep inside you saying, Be of good courage, child, your sins have been forgiven you.
(†) Bishop Augoustinos
A transcribed sermon, which was given at the church of St. Dimitri Mavropigis, Eordaias 3-8-1986