Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity AD 2023

What’s wrong with us? This question is often asked both publicly and privately.

When asked publicly, it concerns all of humanity and is mostly related to wars, crime, and all sorts of social evils. Why can’t we live in peace, goodness, love, and harmony? How is it possible that after each “war to end all wars” another war will soon be started again? When will this killing and destruction ever end?

When on their own, people ask this question when they have done something bad or just been stupid. How is it possible that I keep falling into the same trap? Why don’t I have any willpower? How could I be so stupid again? Why do I allow myself to be provoked and irritated so easily? When will I ever learn?

After the Fall, humanity as a whole and each person individually is like the man sick of the palsy in today’s Gospel. He may want to get up, but he can’t. And because he can’t, he eventually loses the will.

In today’s Epistle, the Apostle Paul speaks about the situation of fallen man in serious, even unpleasant words: “…in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened…through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart…corrupt according to the deceitful lusts...”

The only thing that can help us – each individual and all of humanity – is the healing touch of our Saviour. However, our healing does not begin with physical recovery, but with our sins being forgiven. Only then we can get up and walk in a new life, being “renewed in the spirit” and clothed with the “new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness”.